The Creative Industries

I embroidered some leaves.

It’s Autumn, after all. I know that because I’ve got an Arran sweater on and tights and my fingers are slightly cold even though I’m indoors and the air smells of damp and fungus and sweet marshmallow woodsmoke and there are elderberries in a pot in the kitchen waiting to be cooked into jelly. I left them overnight so that any livestock could escape: a very small snail with a shell as pink and as delicate as a baby’s fingernail and a spider abseiling off the work top.

I was in Manchester recently, sitting nursing a coffee in the Craft and Design Centre, scribbling a few things including snatches of conversations. Four women with presence: neat, A-line skirted, girdled, hair done, nail polished in a pale pink way, big semi-detached, plenty of spare cash for jollies, forthright. A priceless snippet…..

Coiffed No. 1: “She’s got the biggest wardrobe ever: it’s called the floor and the

things she wears. I wouldn’t go out with her it was that bad.”

Coiffed No. 2: “But she still has to get to work, I mean, get from the station or

bus or whatever dressed like that. In public.”

Coiffed No.1: “It’s the Creative Industries she’s in. They’re all like it.”

A pause for cake.

Coiffed No.1: “Why do you wear beige? It’s old. It makes your skin look beige.”

Coiffed No. 3: “It is! And it’s not beige…it’s fawn!”

 

I had another coffee just so I could stay and listen….and then this which just made me roar inwardly:

 

Coiffed No. 1: “His wife died.”

Coiffed No. 2: “Oh!”

A mouthful of coffee.

Coiffed No. 1: “His THIRD wife.”

Coiffed No. 2: “Oh! Really! Three?”

Coiffed No. 3: “He’s a multi-faceted chap is Don. Solicitor. Takes his dog to work with him.”

 

I’ll leave it there…..

 

Banana

My dear friend, The Voice of Sanity, suggested that I post this…..there is a yellow connection, I suppose…..

The Delight of Writing on a Banana Skin with a Ball Point Pen

Feel that tiny metal ball

and the skin yielding to it, making dark lines, not of ink.

Your name.

The texture of each letter wholly satisfying.

Making those lines, those marks identifying you.

Has everyone who left a banana felt this core ecstasy,

this daily sensual pleasure?

The bananas pile high in the bowl.

Yellow grins.

And later these skins will be discarded like old slippers,

browned and untouchable.

Whoever it was that invented the curved plastic banana holder missed the point……

Out of the Mouths of Babes….

Just in case I should ever get above my station…..

 

My daughter asked me once, “what are you mummy?”

I stopped sweeping autumn leaves and sat on the garden bench with her,

a still warm October, the borders glowing, the stone under our feet not cold.

“I’m a poet who gardens.” I said

“and a gardener who makes frocks and

a seamstress who writes poetry.

What do you think I am?” I asked her, curling a stray strand of hair around her ear.

“You’re the cushion plumper,” she replied.