Word-dancing

 Dear Reader,

I made an interesting discovery in my secret cupboard this week.  It is the manuscript of a book I wrote over forty years ago and it is called 'Half a Pair of People'.  It is about the single life I suddenly had to live after leaving my marriage of twenty years.  Many things struck me as I read, one of them was how cheap everything was then. To go to a Singles Club the ticket would cost me £1.69p, and my first wages as a secretary in an Oxford College, for a full 38 hours week, was about £60 and no luncheon vouchers either. But the puzzling thing is how much I have forgotten of my life at that time.   Lots of names of people I can't remember came up whom I seem to have spent lots of time with and places I went to.  I now have no recollection of them. Some of it is quite funny and I do hope that somehow I will be able to publish it.  

Always looking for jobs, I once  took a job as a receptionist in an Oxford hotel but when I arrived the owner said I had to do the cooking.  As I am not a good or enthusiastic cook this pronouncement took me back.   But what I had to do was have a pan of boiling water always on the hob and a pan of boiling fat and simply pop frozen duck or chicken into the appropriate pan. Frozen vegetables went into the boiling water.  In addition I had to wear a brown nylon uniform and had taken a wig with me so that my hair didn't smell of kitchen fumes.  I have never forgotten that night, but looking back it now seems rather funny.

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September 11th, 1826 from William Cobbett in Wiltshire

"Between Somerford and Oaksey  I saw, on the side of the road, more goldfinches than I had ever seen together; I think fifty times as many as I had ever seen at one time in my life.  The favourite food of the goldfinch is the seed of the thistle.  This seed is just now dead ripe.  the thistles are all cut and carried away from the fields by the harvest; but they grow alongside the roads; and, in this place, in great quantities.  so that the goldfinches were got here in flocks, and as they continued to fly along before me for nearly half a mile, and still sticking to the road and the banks, I do believe I had, at least, a flock of ten thousand flying before me."

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Word-dancing

The woman discovers the double act
of word-dancing at dinner,
recognizes with excitement
mutual friends from books,from poetry,
from words explored, but only
known thus far in solitude.

Together they dance through imagined lands
sharing knowledge,
throwing words back and forth
in light ethereal movements,
cerebral binding and bonding,
now the foxtrot, now the waltz.

For her these pleasures
are found at lunch parties, at dinner,
in libraries, on courses.
But where can the young word-dance?
Her grandson lunches on the run,
dines with Eastenders,
goes clubbing on solitary trips
too noisy, frightening, for word-dancing,
for cerebral binding and bonding,
now the foxtrot, now the waltz.

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With very best wishes, Patricia