Paris!

You're not Emma Bovary
so stop mourning your sojourn
in Paris like some lost
civilisation

you're an engineer
not a princess
pay your own way
you don't need "les frais"

A point of this career
is to be able
to afford to travel
when to want to

Anyway, your Paris was
always found around
a cafe table
with your friends

LMC

Refinding my Italian books

the tidy woman has no such joys as these.
Lost for months my Italian workbooks
five years of exercises, jokes and learning to
lap my tongue around that teasing language - lost!

now today when Brian unearths them
from the depths of a bureau drawer where
I had put them safe and then forgotten
it's like meeting an old lost friend again!

From "Franco ha un vestito blu" and
"Brutta stronza!", to "Non Sono Quà"
it maps as well a magic friendship,
born bizarrely in a storm.

Lessons at the Paris mosque,
in cafés, Tunisia, Sardinia and more
but more, a friend to really talk with
e che mi manca perchè non sono là

Sketch

Working on my laptop,
what's Sketch chasing now?
Aha, my watch makes a moving sunbeam
Light exercise for a young cat

Peonies on my Birthday

George Collis 2 Nov 1925 - 15 May 1979

The peonies flower every year on my birthday

It was always remarked upon

But no-one ever thought to tell me why.
I just thought liking peonies was part of your love

of Japan, like calling our home Sayonara
Teaching me to use chopsticks,
To open Japanese trickboxes and to
Sort of count to five- (ichi, ni, san, frei, go)

Even when I offered to bring you peonies from
My new flat in Westgate, "Oh no" you said
"You can’t cut peonies, they shed their petals."
Even now I remember your smile
But you didn’t think to tell me why
And far too soon you were gone. I tried
To get a peony to grow on your grave
But as you know too well, they’re fussy flowers

Yet still the peonies at my mother's
Bloom on my birthday every year
And in Paris on my birthday I saw the peonies,
Cut flowers in the florist's. The only time
I heard your voice, saying “Buy those peonies
From me for your birthday, they must be special.” And so
They were, they kept a week. I’ve saved the petals
And still no-one thought to tell me.

Finally last birthday (52), my mother saw I didn’t know.
The peonies, passed from a great aunt via my grandfather
To my father, had sulked ever since their transplant
Then the day, the very day that I was born
You flew up to the hospital crying, “The peonies
Have flowered! They’ve finally flowered!” Later you tried
To cut and bring them to us but they shed their petals.
I was so lucky not to be called Peony, considering.

Mum - Cherry Blossom Time

A dance of leaves and fluttered petals 

An aching stubbornness of tangled branches 

And yet a flash of laughter as you 

Turn, still young at eighty-two

Mrs King

As I'm reading all the posts on Ada Lovelace day, it reminds me of Vaughn King, who was such an inspiration to me.
When I knew her she was a little old lady who lived near us in Kingsgate, near Broadstairs in Kent.
I don't know her maiden name, but I remember she'd graduated from Cambridge at 18 and had worked with Kodak in the early days of photography.
I was the first of my family to go to Grammar School and was having a difficult time at home and school around the age of 15 to 18. She was a real support to me and kept me working hard to go to university.
She was well enough to see me get there, but soon after contracted Alzheimer's disease and had to go into a home.
I would have liked her to see me become a Chartered Engineer.

Ada Lovelace Day

Amy Johnson died delivering planes to airbases in the war as part of the Air Transport Auxiliary.
The women of the ATA flew every type of plane, many more than the fighter pilots, flying the planes from the factories to the bases.
Before the war, Amy set numerous flying records, including being the first women to fly solo from Britain to Australia, and set the solo record for flying from London to Cape Town.
This blog has been issued in support of AdaLovelaceDay (http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay)