Strange but True - Amsterdam Funeral

I was trying to find something different to fit in with the theme of Strange but True when I came across this, I think it was in a ‘100 Strange but True Facts’ article.

“If you die in Amsterdam with no next of kin and no friends or family to prepare funeral or mourn over the body, a poet will write a poem for you and recite it at your funeral.”

I was impressed and wondered where to apply for the job…

     I must visit Amsterdam.

I’ve laughed and I’ve cried reading ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’.  Anne Frank wrote witty and amusing accounts to ‘Kitty’, with honesty about her feelings as she coped with her family’s situation and truthful about her mixed up moods and personal concerns as she emerged from childhood into puberty. For two years, summer 1942 until summer 1944, the Frank family were in hiding from the Germans with another Jewish family in the top floors of an office block in Amsterdam.

This is my real reason to visit Amsterdam, just to see for myself the place known by the family as ‘the annexe’ that Anne Frank called home and learn more about how they managed. I believe it is tiny and I’m told it’s much commercialised but I would like to see for myself and show respect for their hardship and later suffering.

One of my father’s pubs had a live-in barman. He was an elderly gentleman known as Old Joe and he had lived there for many years. The only family he had was a nephew who came to take him out on his day off. He worked in the pub, played snooker for the team and always had toffees in his pocket for me and my sister. He blended in with us like family and even had his favourite ‘tripe and cow heel pie’ made for him by my mother or our housekeeper once a week. He was very deaf and had the tv on full volume when he sat in our living-room to watch the sport on a Saturday afternoon.  According to my father, he’d heard a rumour that Old Joe had a drawer full of unopened wage packets. Joe had free board and lodgings with us, the locals kept him in beer with a pint or two and his nephew treated him to lunch and whatever else on their days out. My dad was concerned and thought that if Joe really did have so much money around, it would be safer in the bank. Apparently, Joe neither confirmed nor denied the rumour, just laughed it off and told my dad he was alright, there was no need to bother. Joe lived a few more years into his nineties. There was no significant amount of money in his room. Strange, perhaps, to some, but true.

 

My chosen poem, I'd love to believe it's true.

 

 

The lost Lost Property Office

 

‘On buses and trains you wouldn’t believe

The crazy things that passengers leave

 

A ventriloquist’s dummy mouthing a scream

Two tickets (unused) for Midsummer Night’s Dream

 

Handcuffs, chains and a spiderman suit

The tangled remains of a failed parachute

 

Rucksacks, tents and rolled-up beds

If they weren’t screwed on they’d lose their heads

 

Two bull terriers and a Siamese kitten

Suicide note, hastily written

 

Garden forks with broken handles

A birthday cake with four candles

 

A file with TOP SECRET stamped in red

(Inside a card, April Fool, it said)

 

Safe and secure behind a locked door

Priceless works of art by the score

 

Paintings by Hockney, Warhol and Blake

Two Mona Lisas (possibly fake)

 

Magritte’s bowler hat and Van Gogh’s chair

Duchamp’s urinal and a paint-stained pair

 

Of trousers belonging to Toulouse Lautrec

(short in the leg, black and white check)

 

A painting by numbers of Rembrandt’s head

Dirty sheet and a pillow off Tracey’s bed

 

Jigsaw by Rodin, of two lovers kissing

Damien Hirst skull with the diamonds missing

 

Am I overworked? Of course I am

The list goes on ad nauseam

 

A shot putter’s shot and a pole vaulter’s pole

A partial eclipse and a Black Hole

 

A bucket of toenails and a wooden plank

Two air-to-air missiles and a Russian tank

 

The Statue of Liberty and an oil slick

Mountains of mobiles and an old walking stick

 

Lost any of these? Bad news I’m afraid

The Lost Property Office has been mislaid.’

 

Roger McGough, CBE, FRSL

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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A pedant may look at a poet

Guest post by David Riley.

The pedant sat beside me. I didn’t know he was a pedant at the time but forgive me for jumping ahead. I drank my beer, tried to watch the sports channel.

“Tell me what you know on poetry about comic strips.” I knew it was him wheezing the question; I tried to stay calm, didn’t blurt out denials about being involved in that dirty poetry habit. All in all I thought I’d taken it kinda well.

“Who wants to know?” I didn’t take my eyes off the screen.

“Let’s start with me.” Then I noticed he was wearing winklepickers. Anyone who’d get his own toes to cosy up to each other was no man to trifle with. “Poems and comic strips have a lot in common,” I began to waffle. “Comic strips are sorta like Haiku, compressed poems. Also, you got maybe four panes to tell your story. Pictures and words.” Out of the corner of his eye I could see him using a toothpick. I drank some beer, played for time.

“Or no words at all. People have to interpret the pictures. Like poetry, see?” I was pleased with that one. He began playing with the toothpick, running it finger to finger like a silver dollar.

“Or if they use words in strips, the drawer – writer – has to decide where to put them on the page. Like poets have to decide how to put their words in lines.” That should hold the old guy. I felt smug, took my beer. He snapped the toothpick.

“You’re making me tense, kid.”

“Surely that’s right,” I said in a rush, “there’s a lot of overlap between poems and comic strips…” His right winklepicker began to tap. In overdrive. “What did I ask you?”

I whimpered.

“I asked what you know on poetry about comic strips. You got an F kid.”

“But…but…”

“You’ve told me how they might be alike. Poems and comic strips. I know one about them. Liz Lockhead, Scotch guy. Look it up why dontcha?”

“I will. I’ll do that.”

“One poem. One measly poem. What does that tell ya son?”

I bibbled.

“Think there’s any more? Maybe your friends know? Answers on a post card. Or in a comments box near you.” I don’t think I’ve seen the last of the pedant.

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