Dust - If You Must

 

Dust if you Must by Rose Milligan Next

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better To paint a picture, or write a letter, Bake a cake, or plant a seed; Ponder the difference between want and need? Dust if you must, but there's not much time, With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb; Music to hear, and books to read; Friends to cherish, and life to lead. Dust if you must, but the world's out there With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair; A flutter of snow, a shower of rain, This day will not come around again. Dust if you must, but bear in mind, Old age will come and it's not kind. And when you go (and go you must) You, yourself, will make more dust.

 

That poem sums me up. I don’t live in a messy muddle, but I won’t lose any sleep over dusty shelves that can wait until tomorrow, or the next day. There is more to life. There’s a saying about ‘boring women have tidy houses’, something like that. It might be on a fridge magnet. I declare, I am not boring.

It is a bit disconcerting to read that household dust is composed of 20 – 50% dead skin cells. The rest is hair, fur, pollen, fibres from fabric and various other materials in the environment. I won’t dash for the anti-bacterial spray and a good cloth just yet. I’ll finish writing first, unless I see a dust mite or start to feel itchy. If it’s true, the layer of house dust doesn’t look any worse after five years. I’m not going to purposely run that experiment. I admit to being a teeny weeny bit embarrassed recently when we needed help to move a large sideboard and hatch style unit. The top surface of the hatch could have been a five year science exercise, but I know it wasn’t as long as that, I promise.

Soon, some remedial building work will create more than the average layer of dust. I’ll wait until it is all complete before I clean up.

Outside, the dry weather has made everywhere dusty. We spent the weekend enjoying some caravan time at one of our favourite places in Garstang. Passing vehicles, as slow as they were on the site, churned up powdery clouds with the dryness of the road tracks. Cars looked like they’d been through a sand storm.

Now, I’d like some help, please. Who wrote the poem ‘Dust if you Must’ credited above to Rose Milligan, but I also have the same poem in a book by Pam Ayres, showing her as having the copyright?

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Housework - Squeaky Clean, Not Quite

 

Housework, that never-ending project that always starts with good intentions, but there are so many distractions and a complete lack of interest. That’s just me, obviously. Some people (other women) can’t rest until everything sparkles, nothing is out of place and a mixed fragrance of polish, disinfectant and Shake’n’Vac fill the air, a little diluted by the open windows. This is the opposite of me. I once saw a quote on a fridge magnet or something, along the lines of “Boring women have tidy houses”. With that in mind, I can promise you I am not boring. My house isn’t a tip, not exactly, but looking around, there are areas of ‘a work in progress’, things just started or not quite finished. It is the multi-tasking that does it. For example, the laundry can be happening while I’m doing something else. A loaded washing machine, switched on, looks after itself. How helpful it might be to have the magical finger clicking skills of Mary Poppins when the grandchildren have been and left everything out.

One evening, over Christmas, we had rain seeping in through the lounge bay window, dripping from the blinds on to the sill. It wasn’t much, just an annoying drip, with no obvious point of entry. I had to squeeze myself behind the Christmas tree to place a folded towel to soak up the water and silence the drip. It had rained constantly for days, so there must be a weak spot somewhere. We never found it, inside or out, and it hasn’t happened since. Watch this space. We noticed loose wallpaper, hidden by furniture, needing further investigation after Christmas, and when I had recovered from whatever virus plagued me for about a week.

The time came. The tree and everything festive, removed, boxed and returned to the attic. Spring cleaning can commence, but first, the wall needs checking. It was simple enough, remove the contents of the small bookcase, move bookcase out of the way – note to self for next time, the shelves are not fixed – I squeal in pain, but mind my language because I’m a lady. Examine the wall. The wallpaper has come off because the plaster is crumbling. A slight tap and lots of powdery plaster comes away building a pyramid shape on the edge of the carpet. All is dry, bone dry. A few spoken thoughts, then dustpan and brush followed by the vacuum cleaner. There’s nowhere else for the bookcase and contents to go, so it is put back to where it was. The post-Christmas cleaning and tidying continued, until I found something more appealing to do. Someone who knows about walls and plaster crumbling has been sent for. This might mean that the purchase of new chairs has to wait.

Housework is summed up perfectly in this poem by Pam Ayres, followed by one of mine,

Dust If You Must

Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
To paint a picture or write a letter,
Bake a cake or plant a seed,
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim and mountains to climb,
Music to hear and books to read,
Friends to cherish and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world’s out there,
With the sun in your eyes, the wind in your hair,
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain.
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it’s not kind.
And when you go – and go you must –
You yourself will make more dust.

                                                            Pam Ayres

I’m With These 2018 Heroes

The kitchen floor needs mopping
And the beds are left unmade
But I’m not doing housework
While there’s matches being played.

The perfect football pitches,
Neatly mowed and lush and green,
Ready for the world’s finest
To give us the best we’ve seen.

So bring it on, DeBruyne,
Ronaldo and Messi, too.
Fellaini and Suarez
I’ll be watching all of you.

A huge shout out for England,
For Harry Kane and the boys,
I’ve taught my grandkids to cheer
And to fill my house with noise.

Fav’rites Rashford and Lingard,
The skilful Eric Dier,
I’m loving every moment,
Applauding Harry Macguire.

The crumbs stay on the carpet
While the football frenzy flows
And the pots wait in the sink
‘Til the final whistle blows.

Pamela Winning 2018 (edited 2024)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Love Bites - Blotting My Copy Book

 

I had done what my dad would refer to as ‘Blotted my copy book’. I’d been there before but this time I’d excelled myself in the ‘What has she done now?’ misdemeanours and no amount of wide-eyed fictional protesting could talk me out of this situation or lessen the impact.

Returning home after two weeks away in Europe with school friends, I was exhausted after a lengthy over-land journey but still on a high and buzzing with enthusiasm to share thoughts on where I’d been. I thought they, my family, would be pleased to see me. I was naïve. Worse, I’d been stupid. Caught up in a moment fuelled by Slivovitz and the sultry, open air discotheque and, yes, of course it was my own fault.

“I hope you weren’t getting up to what I was doing when I got love bites!”  There was a hint of a snigger from the barmaid. I’d just dragged my suitcase through the pub door and she could see me from the bar. She was only a year older than me, married to my dad’s cellar man and had a baby daughter. She was lovely. She’ll never know how much.

My story was more innocent than her story implied. Mine was no more than a dare in Opatija. Who can get the biggest, reddest love bite out of the four of us up for it. We had become friendly – and it was just friendly – with some lads from a posh boarding school. Everything  above board and respectable, apart from the awful love bites.

Following the passing of my mother and re-marriage of my father, our family dynamics had changed considerably and everything familiar and comfortable to me had gone. It is hard enough to be a teenage girl without complications of where you fit in, where you belong.

It wasn’t many minutes into my arrival before the proverbial hit the fan. My dad was speechless. Even he couldn’t stand my corner on this one. His wife, with a ‘How dare you do this to us’ headless chicken routine, throwing in to my dad, ‘I knew she’d do something, I told you.’

I don’t suppose it helped when I reassured them that the love bites will have gone long before I go back to school and meanwhile, I’ll dab them with Witch Hazel and hide them with makeup, better than I have done.

I didn’t fit in and I didn’t belong, but for the time being I had a good friend in the barmaid who was always there for me and wanted me to do well for myself, not be tied down like she thought she was. Life goes on and we’ve both done ok.

By the way, love bites are disgusting and I promise I haven't had any since!

I’ve chosen poems that are not love-bite related, but take me back to that summer and remind me of my fascination with the poets concerned.

Love’s Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? –

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 – 1822


She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron 1788 - 1824


Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Nonsense - Self-Isolation

I listened, properly. I was perched on the edge of the sofa, leaning forward, hanging on to his every word. It was important that I didn’t miss anything and that I fully understood.  It wasn’t long before I felt frustrated, “Spit it out, man, stop bumbling.” Then annoyed, “For goodness* sake, Boris.” Soon I was angry, mainly with myself for waiting most of the day ‘for enlightenment’ only to find myself wading through a sea of verbal nonsense from someone struggling to string a proper sentence together. Anyway, nothing has changed for me and I will continue to self-isolate.

Lockdown is no problem to me in so far as I love being at home. I am safe here, not stuck here. As well as doing the things I enjoy, I have taken the opportunity to spring-clean and sort out. I kept putting off doing the little room. This is the upstairs box room, which was the nursery for our children. It became the computer room, going back a bit, when monitors and processors were massive. Add a desk, chair and a printer, and one person could comfortably work in there. Later, it became the study. New desk, lap-top, wireless printer and walls lined with book cases which soon got filled. Our eldest grandson calls it our library. He likes to have a bedtime story from my children’s collection when he sleeps over. This little room has also become a dumping ground for things that are in the way but still wanted and not to be confined to the attic or the shed, well, not yet.

I made a space for myself by chucking a few things out that shouldn’t have been in there then got started on sorting out my writing. Exercise books, notepads, scribblings. Unfinished poems, opening paragraphs, some completed stuff. A couple of rejection letters, kept to keep me grounded. Plenty, and I mean a lot, of written nonsense, some made it to the bin, but a few items showing a glimmer of promise, might be worth picking up again. Published work, a thin folder, but one of which I’m proud and has a self-awarded gold star. My work-in-progress novel which hasn’t seen much progress lately. I didn’t dare to start reading that otherwise nothing else would get sorted out. It isn’t nonsense, though, it needs work. I spent two afternoons just on my writting stuff and I discovered that there’s a flicker of hope on some of those hand-written pages. I have rejection letters but I also have lots of positive feed-back and encouragement, enough to tell me to push myself out there while I still can. And with nothing to lose, I must.

So self-isolation continues. The news is scary, the outside world is too scary for me. I don’t support Boris or his party but I have to pay attention, however cross he makes me feel. I won’t return to work to mix with the public before I can see my family, that’s nonsense. I think it is too soon to lift restrictions but I was disappointed at his lack of clarification. I didn’t expect him to be specific, because he isn’t, but I hoped to hear something that I could safely interpret to mean it would be fine to have my grandchildren round and see family members, even briefly. They are worth the wait.

Here’s Spike Milligan,

Scorflufus

By a well-known National Health Victim No. 3908631

There are many diseases,

That strike people’s kneeses,

Scorflufus! Is one by name.

It comes from the East

Packed in bladders of yeast

So the Chinese must take half the blame.

There’s a case in the files

Of Sir Barrington-Pyles,

While hunting a fox one day

Shot up in the air

And remained hanging there!

While the hairs on his socks turned grey!

Aye! Scorflufus had struck!

At man, beast and duck.

And the knees of the world went Bong!

Some knees went Ping!

Other knees turned to string

From Balham to old Hong Kong.

Should you hold your life dear,

Then the remedy’s clear,

If you’re offered some yeast – don’t eat it!

Turn the offer down flat –

Don your travelling hat –

Put an egg in your boot – and beat it!

Spike Milligan  (1918 – 2002)

*Choose your own word here – mine wasn’t ‘goodness’.

Thanks for reading, take care and keep safe, Pam x

Read More