Stickers and December...

   Today I have valiantly succeeded in only spending five mins of PostSecret, only making three cups of tea and only smoking three ciggerattes..... I have managed to assemble eighty three whole words on a page which for now will be saved under 'poor excuse for essay.' I feel as Sundays go I am thus far entitled to brownie points.

   'GoodBoy stickers' were introduced into our house a while ago. A trip to the pound shop resulted in grand delusions of creating a starchart... this failed but the 'boys' (being two twenty year old students) react well to them......the 'snappy work' sticker has a pleasing image of a crab. We have all wondered to the pub before and all stood outside peeling stickers from jumpers. 

   Oh, Wales is a cold place to be. We are lucky enough to have a decent house but being in shoulder-nudging proximity to the sea means it is always warmer on campus, a fact I try and remind myself of when I crawl out of bed in a sub-arctic house at silly-o-clock in the morning for lectures.

    Essay topic...am relating Marxism, psychoanalysis and femminism to poetry... that is the boring bit - but the poem itself is good. (I don't like the word good)

Foreign


By Carol Ann Duffy

Imagine living in a strange, dark city for twenty years.

There are some dismal dwellings on the east side

and one of them is yours. On the landing, you hear

your foreign accent echo down the stairs. You think

in a language of your own and talk in theirs.



Then you are writing home. The voice in your head

recites the letter in a local dialect; behind that

is the sound of your mother singing to you,

all that time ago, and now you do not know

why your eyes are watering and what's the word for this.



You use the public transport. Work. Sleep. Imagine one night

you saw a name for yourself sprayed in red

against a brick wall. A hate name. Red like blood.

It is snowing on the streets, under the neon lights,

as if this place were coming to bits before your eyes.



And in the delicatessen, from time to time, the coins

in your palm will not translate. Inarticulate,

because this is not home, you point at fruit. Imagine

that one of you says Me not know what these people mean.

It like they only go to bed and dream. Imagine that.


    I first encountered Duffy in school, when Education for leisure was included in an AQA anthology. I spent hours memorisising it and writing it up my forearms in black pen which quickly became an unreadable smudge. That poem, combined with the lyrics to Creep by Radiohead are the literary soundtrack to my GCSE years. I do like Duffy, although she does not conjour up the awe some other poets do, her poems always have a spark to them, some kind of strength behind them. I occasionally wrap myself in fantasies of meeting her (as she works at my sisters university.......) That would not work though....even in the company of lecturers I admire my speech trips over itself. All I manage is strings of made up words that sound like hysterical expletives. 

  I was talking with housemate today about Way Back When I lived Somewhere Else and memories of such time...there is something about the fall into December that makes me nostalgic I think. She listened and smiled though, so It was fine.

  Work tommorow. I say work, I am going for a pub dinner armed with a birthday cake.Need to text BossLady and enquire about the fact I have not been paid for nearly two months now.
Cup of tea 4 i think....

Blue x