Thursday and I wake late. I remember this on Friday when I return to the uncompleted blog of Thursday. I wonder what did I do and there is a significant pause while I try to remember what my Thursday consisted of. In reality not a lot returns apart from a late breakfast that is really lunch eaten with my partner before we both go to the person who does our nails in her new garage conversion. There was some time spent trying to write a Golden Spade, a form of poem that uses stolen lines from one poem and uses each word as the last word of each line of a new poem. I had chosen the opening lines of a poem by one of the poetry stanza and tried to write a new poem from it. I did not finish it, but may return to it at some later point. Having had my nails clipped and re-polished with a subtle sparkle my partner and I went to visit her brother in order for a questionnaire to be completed as part of a house transaction. I sipped blacked coffee and spectated the process. Then it was home to an evening meal and the final episodes of Neagley, a spin off from Reacher. Having completed Neagley we started on Reacher before I took my meds and went to bed . So I am sure there are other quite important small details that my mind has jettisoned over night but as far as I am concerned that was that particular Thursday of my life. In reality there is a profusion of details that I could conjure up but once started it could snowball into a novel, just like Marcel Proust’s recollection of the smell of freshly baked Madeleines lead him to write the five novels that comprise In Search of Lost Time. As it happens the 15th of October 2014 is the anniversary of my finishing reading that set of novels. Now that’s the real wonder of the unconscious, that on the anniversary of the finishing I end up using it as an explanation of my memory of a day without realising it until I look at my diary. That’s why I loved psychology and why psychology is far more difficult than rocket science.
Friday and I wake late with only an hour before my dentist appointment. My partner goes to the gym to take an aqua class so I have some fresh orange juice to wash down my morning meds and begin my pre dentist ritual. Of course I brush my teeth vigorously and ensure that I do not get toothpaste on my T shirt, the later double checked. The walk down the road to the dentist’s surgery is slow as my body hasn’t really woken up properly yet. At reception I am booked in and settle down to wait. To fill the time I check my messages and send one or two of my own. There is a family birthday to acknowledge and a couple of other things to note.
Eventually I am called into the dentist’s room. My dentist is excellent and has been my dentist for years now. We catch up n family news and then she looks at my mouth and concludes that the lost crown and pin can be glued back in. There is an x-ray taken to check the root is still good and then she sets about gluing the tooth back into place. It does not take long and I am soon at the reception desk paying my bill. The walk home is slow. Once home I check my emails, which today entails reading The Visionary, the weekly newsletter of the Universal Life Church. An interesting read it provides a running commentary on the religious and legal issues that are current in America. Some of it is truly frightening as various religious groups try to impose themselves and beliefs on the state institutions and culture of the country. There is clearly a battle going on between the religious and the secular in America all of which is becoming more polarised and politicised. With that read I start to draft the blog and return to my attempts to write a Golden Shovel.
My Golden Shovel comes together, not good, but okay for my fist and what will be my only attempt. I have chosen the opening lines of a Helen Jayne poem, An Account of Minor Aristocracy, a poet in the poetry stanza group I am in. I first heard this poem in September 2024. It is a first phrase that made me laugh and know I was in for an interesting time with the rest of the poem. The lines are: ” According to a black sheep aunt swigging mead / at a family gathering we were descendants / of Count Sackville- Barret or some such bloke.” So I have use each word to be the end of a line in a new poem, as below;
564
It was by total accident, according
to a relation who happened to
find scrolls and a
wallet of papers, black
and charred like pirated sheep,
that the strange woman was my aunt.
Taken aback I found myself swigging
from a honeyed bottle marked mead
by cheeky monks who knew at
what temperature the the bee made a
juice that could make illicit family.
Vats and flagons found at every gathering
the drinkers drunk until I became we
and here and now to when and where.
So now I wonder where my descendants
will find themselves partaking of
their nectar and losing count
of whether they are Sackville
or some bastards by Barret.
Perhaps it does not matter or
if it does whether there is some
reason to care if such
issues matter to a modern bloke.
564 16-10-2026
Acknowledgement to Helen Jayne and "An Account of Minor Aristocracy"
A Golden Shovel, my first and last.
My partner returns from the gym and we go out for a late lunch of coffee and tuna melts. We chat and clarify our life admin lists before going home. I immediately set about reclaiming the “My BT” app on my phone. It takes ages and I do it by accident. Now I just have a key and code to put in. I tried to get my BT email app to work but after several frustrating tries and failures I give up and finish the Golden Shovel and put it on the blog. Its one of those things that having done it I doubt I will ever do it again. As evening approaches I run my eye over my youngest daughter’s CV and then ease into the evening of a meal and TV. I may do a crossword or two and sign a couple of hard back copies of my books for the guy who wrote the forewords to them. Then it will be all night meds and sleep in readiness for tomorrows poetry stanza, a face to face one, which is always nice.
