A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
Poem for Pookie The cat on her perch by the window to watch the spring come in the trees, the birds nesting and buds sprouting, all life bustling to stir her rampant urges, mouse assassin that she is. Line count: 5 Free verse For no other reason than that it’s true. |
Happiness Is… There’s a song that pops into my head on those rare occasions when I’m feeling irrationally happy. I didn’t know the name of the song until Andrea did her usual detective work and found it in YouTube. Not bad for using only my scant memory of the first few words of the song, hey? The rest was filled in by my dum-de-dum-dee-deeing through the melody. It is fairly amazing that the song has remained in my memory for as long as it has. It dates from 1929 and nears it’s one hundredth birthday therefore. Believe it or not, that is way before my time and the only reason why I should know it at all is that it was played on the radio a few times in my youth. Such a strange little thing to have created so strong a home in my mind. There is no explaining the idiosyncrasies of the human brain. The name of the song is The Wedding of the Painted Doll and it comes from a Broadway musical surely forgotten after all these years. Apart from the limitless memory of YouTube, of course. It’s a merry little tune that is perfect for expressing a mindless, inexplicable happiness similar to the mood that always awakens its memory in me. I’ll put a link below to the YouTube film of the play for your interest. It’s one of those grand productions with a cast of hundreds of dancers, probably one of the very earliest of such creatures. Much of the dancing is surprisingly inventive and adept for the time. I particularly like the dance of the feller who is to conduct the wedding, for instance, and the scene where a giant ball is passed along a line of chorus girls is also very original. Andrea commented with the sobering thought that the entire cast must be dead by now and those cheerful, fit and energetic performers in the clip had no thought of how they would one day be old and frail. Even that could not dent my happiness at remembering the song this morning, however. Anyway, I’ll shut up now and let you enjoy the YouTube clip. Word count: 368 |
A Geographical Thought There are two things I never thought would happen in my lifetime. One was the reunification of Germany and the other was the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia. Both were highly unlikely to ever be achieved but have now happened. At this rate, there might even come a day when the Kurds have their own country again. And that hasn’t happened for thousands of years. They are, after all, of Biblical age and are descended from the people known as the Medes and the Persians. They are the Medes. Word count: 89 |
Falling Out of Love - The Blog Post I wrote a poem today. Unprompted, unbidden, just because I felt like it. Although it was Colin Hay’s song, I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You, that put me in the right mood. Not that the poem’s about the song - it isn’t. But the mood is probably the same. Anyway, I read it to my wife and she says I should put it on the Newsfeed. Which seems a bit forward to me but I figured I could put it in the blog and then announce the new blog post. That should be self effacing enough, surely. So here it is:
And, if you want to listen to Colin Hay’s song: Word Count: 123 |
A Missive for Today Today is my Annual Humiliation Day with my doctor. I am to be prodded, interrogated, inspected, disrobed and examined to the nth degree, finally to be cast out with the usual admonitions and warnings of how careful I need to be, in spite of my essentially reasonable numbers. Don’t get me wrong - I like my doctor and we have as much entertaining conversation as is possible in the circumstances. It is just that it’s difficult to be completely at ease when undressed and laid out on a giant sheet of tissue paper for inspection. And it is likely to be somewhat longer than usual, given the interesting year I have had healthwise and the fact that I missed last year’s humiliation thanks to Covid. No, I didn’t catch it. It’s just that the humiliation was supposed to be by video link but, for some unknown reason, it never happened. So there is much for my doctor and I to discuss today. And it may be some time before I can leave the harsh world of reality to return to the comforting arms of WdC. Which is the point of this message to my unreadership. I shall be missing for an unknown period this morning. Please try hard to get by without me during that time. Thank you. Word count: 219 |