Poem – Page 9 – Middle Age Fanclub

Poetry Blog: Christmas Quiz

There’s nothing overly complex or clever about this poem. Put simply, I wrote it after conducting a Christmas quiz with one of my last classes of the term just gone. It just struck me as such an excellent scene in the classroom – loud, tense, excited, never still. A bunch of children working together in teams and despite the fact that some of them would rather appear anything but excited, the element of competition is absolutely impossible to ignore!

So while acting as the showbiz style quiz master, I realised that this was an atmosphere that was too good to miss out on; so I wrote some notes and then sat down later and threw them together as something a bit more poetic. And here’s the result.

Christmas Quiz

Catching them unawares is the really fun part. In fact, you could argue it’s downhill all the way after that.

As the quiz is announced the air crackles with a tangible excitement that is momentarily pierced by the feigned boredom of the cool kids. It won’t be long though, before they’re animated in glorious technicolour, shouting out, competitive as Olympians and quietly singing the words to Christmas carols in the missing words round.

With each question the tension builds and instead of ‘Lords ‘a leaping’ we have boys ‘a bouncing, girls ‘a screeching in teams competing and by question ten the chatter has become a rabble, has become a riot and we can no longer truly claim that all we have is a quiz.

This, in fact may well be a matter of life and death.

By the end of the quiz we’ve seen and heard it all. The careless calling out of what is very definitely the ‘right’ answer with a wink, the throwing up of arms, the almost audible straining of brains as the tip of the tongue is explored for an answer.

This is the chaos of the circus, the madness of rush hour and the irregular noise of the orchestra warming up all mixed together in the same bowl. This is the Christmas quiz.

If, like me you’re a teacher or you work in some capacity in a school, you’ll no doubt identify with the chaos of the Christmas quiz. If you’re not, then imagine a child’s birthday party, but with questions. The two will have much in common.

With the poem I wanted to capture the chaos and the noise, but also the subtleties – things like boys (and it’s always boys) pretending they’ve called out their right answer just a little too loudly in order to convince a rival team to write it down and thus lose a point. Sat at the front of the class with a blank sheet of A3 paper, I was able to note all of these things down; the attempts to cheat, the confidence even when it’s very clear that you’ve got completely the wrong answer and the looks of concentration on faces when kids search for an answer that they know, but haven’t the slightest hope of committing to paper!

The Christmas quiz has that element of fun that something like a revision quiz doesn’t have, but it still retains the desperate will to win in all who compete. And for that matter, despite the irritation of the rules being completely ignored within seconds, as the excitement kicks in, and all Hell breaking loose by about question three, it’s a whole load of fun. It definitely merits having a poem written about it…maybe not in your book, but very much in mine! I hope you like it and I hope, with some of my younger readers, it’s inspiration enough to join the teaching profession!

Poetry Blog – ‘Distraction’

I couldn’t think of a name for this poem for few days after I’d written it, but ended up settling on ‘Distraction’ because that’s exactly what it was.

I was sat in a lesson at work – I’m a teacher. I wasn’t teaching, but I was observing another member of staff in my role as mentor. The lesson wasn’t dull, so that wasn’t why I got distracted. On the contrary, it was going well, I’d filled in the sections of the observation form and we were at the point where I probably wasn’t going to see anything new. I try not to intervene with behaviour issues while I’m observing, so rather than keep too watchful an eye on the class, I drifted off for a minute and happened to glance out of the window. At the moment our lessons last for 2 hours and 50 minutes – thanks COVID-19 – and so, believe me, there’s plenty of time to drift off and still complete a perfectly good observation!

It was the view that set me off. From my seated vantage point there wasn’t actually a lot to see; mainly the tops of some unremarkable school buildings and the odd bird. But the sky was the main thing that caught both my eye and my imagination. Not to be too much of an old hippy, but it was just a lovely blue colour, which if you’re not familiar with English weather, isn’t that common. I started to scribble down some notes and even took a furtive visit to the window to take in the view properly, before scribbling for a little while longer. Anyway, the result was the poem you’re about to read which I completed from the notes a couple of days later while I was supposed to be teaching a class. Just kidding…

Distraction

From the window, the faint blue of a sky occasionally diluted further by barely there clouds, distracts me. Like the sky crayoned in on a child’s drawing. I take it all in, seeing the blue interrupted where the vapour trails of all too rare planes impose themselves.

Plump, cartoonish gulls congregate on rooves, to take the air, shoot the breeze and socialise. Another nod to a child’s naïve drawing. Even the puddles on the flat rooftops seem to bask in the unexpected sun.

In the distance a church steeple dominates the view, as if reaching upwards like some scarecrow that attempts to scatter the clouds that spoil the sky. The sun sparkles in windows that now seem to smile their approval.

Houses stand suddenly more proud than they have in weeks, a carpet of now inviting green at the front of each and the autumn trees give one last exhibition, their near fallen leaves for now like peacock feathers in the afternoon light.

The noise of a giddy school yard now travels further, no longer softened by the gloom of the fog. Even the brutalist confrontation of the nearby pylons is transformed into something, if not beautiful, then at least more acceptable to the eye.

My workplace is at the top of a big hill and from the classroom that I was sat in, it overlooks quite a lot of countryside, the town of Ossett and parts of Wakefield. The M1 motorway is neatly hidden behind another hill and it’s actually a lovely far reaching view. You can even see a couple of enormous power stations many miles away on a clear day such as the one that I was writing about. Even the power stations take on a certain sense of majesty on days like these. It’s not the first time that this particular view has distracted me.

With this poem I was trying to emphasise just why I’d got distracted in my language choices. I hope it doesn’t come across as being a bit pretentious. Especially if you know the view! But those seagulls really did look like someone had drawn them in and the sky seemed inconsistent in it’s colour, like a child’s drawing when they’ve got tired of colouring and just left bits blank or slightly less blue than other sections. In terms of weather, for me there are few better days than a crisp, bright, blue-skied Autumn day. There’s something about the way the light falls and the subtle tones in the sky and the trees that make them very special and I really wanted to convey that in a better way than just saying how blue and cold it looked.

Distraction in general is a constant feature of my life. It has been since childhood and I would still say that there are portions of every day where I’m in a world of my own, not ignoring people but distracted. It might be thinking of things to get in the supermarket, an upcoming football match, a passing aeroplane…literally anything, I’m that vacant! Alternatively though, I might just have lines in my head for the introduction to a blog or a stanza of a poem. Whatever it is I think it’s the bane of my wife’s life given the amount of instructions she is forced to repeat to me.

Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture. It was bad enough that I drifted off for a few minutes of the lesson. I think reaching for my phone and taking a picture would have been a little too rude. So, I hope the poem does the view and the afternoon justice. By all means let me know what you think in the comments.

Poetry Blog – ‘Lockdown Museum’

This was a poem I wrote during our first period of lockdown. It was early summer and I sat down outside with an idea for a poem; something to remember lockdown by. Now, when you think about it, we’re not going to need anything to remember lockdown by. I think, for most of us, it’ll be firmly etched on the mind forever. For some of us lockdown brought the heartache of not being able to see family and friends, alongside thoroughly bizarre sights like fleets of empty buses on the roads, pubs and shops remaining closed and the sight of an oncoming family during your daily exercise stint striking fear into your heart as you played a strange game of chicken about who would cross the road first. And then there were the sounds…oh wait, with everyone locked away there were hardly any sounds!

For other people lockdown quickly lost its importance because apparently they weren’t allowed their human rights. Human rights such as being able to get ridiculously drunk in pubs every weekend, being able to walk down supermarket aisles any way they wanted and having to forego their right to ignore people’s personal space in shops. The term Covidiot quickly became a tired label, but it never lost its accuracy. It’s a hard life for some.

I decided – for some unknown reason – that I wanted to use rhyme in this poem, which is something I rarely do. It was a bit of a challenge to come up with rhymes that didn’t feel forced and, as a result, the poem took me a lot longer than usual. Another result, in my opinion, is that it sounds like I wrote it in Year 8. Sadly, I didn’t. So, a glowing reference for the poem from its writer then!

Anyway, here’s the poem, so I’ll let you judge it and its merits. You, dear reader, might just prefer a bit of rhyming…

Lockdown Museum

With 2020 fast being referred to as a hell of a year I’ve come up with my own commemorative idea. A grand exhibition with a pandemic theme, I’ve decided to create a lockdown museum.

With schools closing in early March, some educational artefacts would really look the part. Board markers, a highlighter, some stickers for praise, my own now redundant planner to prove I worked some days, a well worn copy of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a metaphor for the tragedy, disruption and the stress.

For the NHS and all of the intrepid frontline staff there’s PPE, rubber gloves and the obligatory mask. A child’s painted rainbow and a Thank You sign, pots, pans and applauding hands to represent that time, a video of Captain Tom, later made a knight, a latter day icon to help ease the nation’s plight.

A plethora of lockdown paraphernalia would make up all the rest unusual items that helped every day as the virus put us to the test. A beer pump, idle, to mark that pubs were closed, A ‘No Entry’ sign for supermarket aisles as well as empty roads. A ‘PE with Joe’ T-shirt and trainers for the boom in exercise recordings of Zoom quizzes, Teams meetings and House Parties arranged and on a giant TV screen, those daily briefings play to remind us that everything changed.

And perhaps, if hearsay’s true and this virus means there’s a new normality, our museum will grow and never be complete until a vaccine sets us free.

So there it is. A poem, that now I’ve read it through a few more times, I’m a little more proud of. I hope it captures the tone of those times, although I don’t think it quite cuts it where our second period of lockdown is concerned due to the sort of half baked nature of it all. Clearly, the first lockdown was very different.

I feel that there are some references that might need explaining, as I’m aware that not everyone who reads my stuff is from the U.K. So here we go.

Firstly, let me assure you that the first rhyming couplet works. The words ‘year’ and ‘idea’ clearly rhyme and I’ll have nothing said against it, even though if I read it in my accent it clearly doesn’t rhyme at all!

Then, in the second stanza, the reference to my ‘redundant planner‘ is there because just before schools closed I was sent home as I was classed as vulnerable to the virus. I didn’t work again until this September, spending 6 months attempting to work from home and fighting with a particularly unwilling and rebellious laptop. Thus, my planner was largely left unused. Oh, and I’m a teacher by the way, for those who didn’t realise.

The ‘pots, pans and applauding hands’ refers to our weekly clap for the NHS, performed at 8pm in doorsteps all around the country. To show appreciation for their heroic work people would stand outside their houses and clap for two minutes. This then quickly took on a new dimension as people added bashing pots and pans, bin lids etc to the noise they’d make to show their appreciation. Very, very British if you ask me!

‘Captain Tom’ from the same stanza was a 99 year old, retired soldier who took it upon himself to perform a sponsored walk of laps around his garden in order to raise money for the NHS. His aim was to raise £1000, but as his efforts became bigger and bigger news, he ended up raising £30,000,000 instead and was later knighted by the Queen. Arise Sir Tom and God Bless us all!

The penultimate stanza then references several things that stood out about everyday life in lockdown, my favourite being ‘PE with Joe’ – the fitness expert Joe Wicks would run exercise classes every morning via his YouTube channel and even on a quiet day thirty thousand people would be squatting in unison! What an endearing image! I personally became borderline obsessive about this – exrecise in general, not just squatting – even going as far as writing a poem about my bromance with the man himself. You can read it on the link below.

Poetry Blog – An Ode to Joe Wicks

So there we have it. Hopefully it’s an upbeat poem that brings back some more tolerable and perhaps even happy memories about a remarkable time in all of our lives. I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to leave a comment.

Poetry Blog: ‘English in the Tech room’.

Some of you will already know that, when I’m not writing the type of nonsense that regularly populates these pages, I’m a teacher. I teach English in a high school. So far, so straightforward, right? Well, no. This is the bit where things get a little complicated.

Unless you’ve been time travelling or hiding in a cave for the last year or so, you’ll be aware of Coronavirus or COVID-19. You’ll also be aware that it’s caused quite a lot of disruption to our everyday lives. (Someone get the Understatement of The Year klaxon, quick!). So it’ll come as no surprise to non-teaching readers to learn that life in schools has changed massively.

I wrote about some of the changes in my previous blog about our second lockdown so I won’t bore you with it here and now. However, one thing I didn’t mention is that because of the introduction of Covid-safe year group bubbles in school, our kids stay in the same area for each day and us teachers have to go to them. Oh, the joy of not having a classroom of my own again! Lugging everything you need for a whole day to the other side of school – one of the rooms I have to move to is literally as far away as I could go while still in a school building – and then invariably realising you’ve forgotten something 5 minutes into a lesson, dropping books along the way, forgetting to go via the one way system and finding that nothing IT-wise works when you get there. Yep, it’s been a tonne of fun!

Anyway, two of my lessons are now in Science labs, while another is in a Tech room, as in the kind of room where people make stuff out of wood, metal or plastic using dangerous tools and great big machines. It was here I got the idea for a poem. I mean, this wasn’t really the ideal place to be teaching Priestley or Dickens! Then again, I do love a challenge!

‘English in the Tech Room’

Beneath the desk I’m immediately struck by the presence of a pair of rig boots, loitering. Handy, I think, if I’m carrying the complete works of Shakespeare; such a weighty tome could break these toes currently entombed in just a pair of brogues. Handy too if this pandemic takes a bizarre twist and we move to zero gravity.

My students are perched uncomfortably on stools surrounding wooden work benches adorned by vices, And thus, the reading of any text, from Dickens through Owen to Heaney will inevitably be accompanied by an incongruous metallic jangle as child spins handle, or whatever they call that bit.

Further distraction will come in the form of various examples of heavy machinery. A lathe, several nasty looking drills, an enormous cutting tool… Dickens would spin in his grave as we learn of Scrooge’s redemption surrounded by the collected works of Black and Decker and every kind of saw that man could care to mention.

Warning signs will catch the eye, while shavings of wood and a range of glue assault our nostrils, making concentration a bit of an afterthought. But then a friendly baked rock cake, delivered on a tray from the adjacent cookery room serves to change the teacher’s tune and lighten up this lesson’s mood.

When all said and done, these alien surroundings may not actually matter if we just allow the words to do their work. These benches are our stalls when sharply written literature calls and in these extraordinary times this slight adjustment we must make shouldn’t be a bind. As every English teacher keeps in mind, the words win every time.

So there we are. A poem about sacrifice or just a poem borne out of an old bloke having a bit of a whinge because he’s been told to move from his precious classroom? I’ll leave you to come up with an answer. And whatever the answer might be, I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I’ve enjoyed putting myself to the test against whatever the virus throws at me, workwise. Feel free to leave a comment and if you liked it a lot, having a little click at some of the posts below!

Poetry Blog: An Ode to Donald.

It’s been roughly a couple of hours or so since the news broke that Joe Biden was being declared the new president of the United States of America. I’d started a poem so I sat down to finish it as quickly as possible. I mean the subject matter means it’s too hard to resist, right? And there would be little point in giving it too much thought and then putting something up on the blog in a couple of days. No, better to strike while the iron’s hot.

Now I am in no way a political expert. In fact, I get so frustrated with the general dishonesty and lack of thought from politicians that it just wears me down giving it much thought. But Donald Trump is just one of those characters that piques the interest. Just when you think he’s conquered Mount Ridiculous, he finds a new way to climb it. It’s safe to say that he doesn’t seem like a particularly nice human being. In fact, it’s safe to say quite a lot of things, but I’m not here to offend. Bit of a dick though, isn’t he?

Anyway, I wrote a poem about him and I hope you like it. Or hate it…nothing like polarising opinion!

An Ode to Donald

Donald. With your explanation defying hair like genetically modified Shredded Wheat and that red MAGA hat ruining any attempt to look neat, your last four years like the proverbial bull in a china shop, it’s probably only fitting that they might have to restrain you to get you to stop.

After all, what’s a supreme court challenge because you didn’t get your way, when you’ve spent your whole term in office denying that porn star roll in the hay. With over four hundred White House staff lost there’s been quite some drama, and that’s before we even think about the memoirs of your First Lady, Melania.

Many’s the weekend you’ve spent playing around at Mar-a-Lago, when perhaps the best idea might have been giving running the country a go. Instead, there was that crazy business about building a wall, Four years? I know a bloke – cheap, reliable – could do it in no time at all.

What with frequent cries of fake news and disinfectant cures for Covid-19, grabbing pussy, Twitter outbursts, what a four years it’s been In the end, it was not so much ‘Houston we have a problem’, more, ‘Washington, wave goodbye to that doylem’.

Hope you like the poem. Hopefully people don’t take it too seriously because really, when it comes to politics my views don’t matter. It’s just a bit of fun, albeit at the expense of a complete mentalist. I’m sure he’s got enough money in the bank to enjoy retirement and not get too worried about a daft poem. That said, feel free to let me know what you think…and that includes you too Donnie.

Poetry Blog: Red Kite

Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve loved watching birds. It started when, as a kid, I helped a friend with his birdwatching badge for Cubs and was hooked. We spent a large chunk of an entire summer wandering our local area, spotting birds and recording them in some kind of journal. I didn’t get a birdspotting badge because I wasn’t in the Cubs – too cool for school from an early age, me – but it didn’t matter. I was hooked. As a family we’ve been RSPB members for years and are fairly regular visitors to our two local sanctuaries.

I first noticed ‘our’ red kite a couple of summers ago. I think I first spotted it over our football pitch while taking training with the junior football team that I coach. I didn’t immediately know what it was, but was confident enough to hazard a guess, especially when I saw the red hue of some of its feathers in the light. I looked it up in our RSPB big book of all the birds (not it’s actual name) when I got home and confirmed that it was a red kite.

I then started to see what I assume is the same bird – I don’t imagine we have a gang of them locally – going past our house and it seemed to be around the area on a regular basis. It may go missing every once in a while, but we still see it fairly regularly. It feels like we’re forever chasing it round, in pursuit of the perfect picture, but sadly it seems quite camera shy and always seems to avoid our lenses! On the occasion I’ve written about it flew right above me while I was in my back garden. I ended up writing two poems about it, which I’ll explain later. For now though, here they are.

Red Kite

On a cloudy weekend morning, pegging washing on the line, something catches my eye. A dark shadow drifts and looms above me, dominating the sky. I sense drama, threat, majesty. Looking skyward I am at once transfixed by this giant, dwarfing nearby gulls. The threat remains, intensifies in fact for a moment, as the red kite drops a little in the sky, perhaps spotting me and weighing up his chances. Uninterested though, he drifts on, effortlessly, scanning the land beneath for a moment of opportunity.

I continue to gaze, rapt, in awe as the light above picks out every speck of colour on this enormous wingspan. Looking as if painstakingly painted by the careful brush strokes of an artist they propel him over houses in seconds. Scanning the landscape for something there is no sense of urgency or desperation; only a calm grace that means that although my attention has been grabbed and kept, probably no one else has noticed. No call, no hovering, no swoops or aerobatics – the sky is yours and with one magnificent movement you are propelled forward and out of my sight. The memory, however, will take a little longer to leave.

Red Kite

A cold, wet Saturday morning’s predictability is interrupted joyfully by a shadow overhead. Spotted from the corner of my eye and then focused on fully with an upturned look, the red kite drifts majestically overhead, the king of this sky.

Given the sight, my smile is easy and wonder assured, and yet, it is momentarily replaced by a frozen, fearful gaze. We lock eyes and the hunter briefly drops towards the ground, perhaps spotting some hidden prey, but for an uneasy moment leaving me wondering if I am the dish of the day.

A gentle swat of the giant wingspan and it has passed over my head and onwards. The bird bored by the human; the human still rapt. For a second or two sunlight bursts through clouds and the kite is lit up from above, its vivid rust coloured tail and white feathers in deep contrast to the coal coloured tips of its wings.

All too soon it is gone, leaving behind a sense of loss that will battle with the brief flutter of excitement for the rest of the day.

I ended up writing two poems about the exact same thing. It was only seconds, but it made a real impression on me. Our red kite was possibly the closest I’ve ever witnessed and I got ridiculously excited. How I didn’t drop our clean washing, I’ll never know!

The first poem was written straight from my laptop – a method I don’t usually use. I’d usually scribble ideas down in my notepad first, but this time felt compelled to just write and the laptop was the first thing that came to hand. As a result it was a poem that I came back to and re-drafted a couple of times; again a process that I don’t often bother with. I’m usually happy to scribble out the odd word and leave the poem where it ends. This time though, I made a few visits to the laptop over a period of days to try and get the poem I wanted.

The second poem came as a result of not being sure about the first. So for that one I just scribbled it down in a notepad. I must have felt happier with this one as looking at it now, there are only 5 words crossed out in the entire thing.

Having read both poems back, I’m now puzzled by which I like best or even whether I’m particularly happy with either one! So while I hoped to create something that I was happy with, I’m not sure I succeeded! Anyway, I hope at the very least, I managed to get my excitement and sense of awe across. As ever, I didn’t have a camera or my phone on me so I couldn’t get a picture to remember the moment, so I hope my words do it some justice; especially as there are two attempts at conveying it! I’d be interested to hear what people think.

Poetry blog – ‘This trend for naming storms is fooling no one…’

I’m not particularly sure how it all started, but at some point, somewhere, someone made the decision that we should start referring to storms by name. Human name. It wasn’t really a new thing; we’d been doing it with hurricanes for years, but this was just going to be for high winds and heavy rain. Whichever way I looked at it, it all seemed a bit unnecessary. I mean, if the weather presenter told me that we had to stay indoors because Storm Graham was on the way, I wouldn’t worry at all, which I’m guessing isn’t really the point.

Apparently there is some reasoning behind the naming of storms. The Met Office claim that the naming of storms will aid communication about the storms. Apparently, if it has a name we’ll be better prepared when it comes to keeping property safe! And if you don’t believe me, you can go to the Met Office website and have a read for yourself. Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but if a weather warning was issued and it said that a terrible storm with very high winds was going to hit my area, I’d be fully aware of its potential to cause damage.

Name or no name, the storm was going to do some damage. It wasn’t any more accesible because it had been in some way humanised. I wouldn’t be able to stand in my garden and plead with Gareth, Clive, Grace or even Serenity to not blow my fence down. The naming seemed like a nonsense. Surely, if you’re going to name the very dangerous storm then at least give it a name that did it some justice. Storm Mad Bastard, Storm Angry Nutjob, Storm Violent Fencekiller – surely they’re far more effective in getting the point across? I’d definitely be more wary of Storm I’m Gonna Blow Your House Down, than Storm Terry. Anyway, I wrote my thoughts down in the form of a poem.

This trend for naming storms is fooling no one…

Despite the efforts to make you seem more warm, friendly and cartoonishly cuddly, this trend for naming storms is fooling no one. You’re still a storm after all. You still bring a garrulous reign of terror, like you’ll never, ever shut up. Alphapebtising you and christening you with Disney monikers like Elsa, Mary and Hamish does not lessen your power to disrupt my day. Sleepy, Dopey and Bashful wouldn’t even help as far as that’s concerned.

Bernard still has the potential to severely damage my fence, bringing with him the middle class nightmare of finding a tradesman. Margaret is also no friend to my shrubbery, deflowering as she does the camellia, the hyacinths and God forbid, the showpiece rhododendron. And Theodore, you can be sure, will up-end potted plants, seedling trays and even a half-full water butt, blowing them right across the patio or maybe even as far as the neighbour’s drive, bringing the need for fawning apologies and a false face of shame.

This no doubt, focus group, think tank driven naming ceremony will not lessen your power to keep us indoors for days and, I’ll have you know, something else has already taken care of that so in continuing your path of destruction, with or without a name, frankly you’re taking the piss. It will not help me sleep through a wind that sounds like waves crashing on a shore I hitherto knew nothing of and during the cleaning up process afterwards, it will not allow me to take solace in the fact that it was all caused by a Samantha, a Florence or even an Alice.

I don’t think a great deal of explanation is necessary for this poem. It’s a bit of fun, really. I think the explanation given for the naming of storms is a bit of a nonsense and I hope the poem makes that quite clear while retaining a bit of humour. After all, there are worse things in life that we should be worrying about.

So, as always, I hope you like the poem. I’m sure there’ll be another one along soon. Let me know what you thought in the comments and thanks, as ever, for reading.

Poetry Blog – Teams Meeting

This is a new poem about a fairly modern topic – the online meeting. Now, I understand that they’ve been around for a while, but my point is more that they’ve never before been so widely used. As Coronavirus struck and lockdown ensued across the globe, businesses and other organisations were forced to find new ways of keeping in touch with employees and clients who were now being forced to work from home. And thus, words like Teams, Zoom and House Party, among others, all took on a new meaning.

I’m generally left deflated by even the mere mention of a meeting and, probably as a result, I’m inclined to simply drift off. I’ve fallen asleep in more than one. But if people insist in reading entire PowerPoint presentations back to me, word for word, then I reserve the right to get bored.

Lockdown and working from home felt, as much as anything else, like time off from meetings for me. And then someone mentioned Teams and Zoom. And so, as I sat in my first ever Teams meeting I made sure that I was paying attention – they could all see me, after all, but kept a notebook out of site after realising that there could be a poem in this! So here you go – the secondary result of my first couple of Teams meetings.

Teams Meeting

A little blue circle floats and spins, taunting me with my lateness. Usually, said circle is laughed off, commented on with a half-baked witticism, something like, ‘It’s thinking about it’ accompanied by a knowing smile, a raised eyebrow. But not today. Today’s blue circle is a slow death, evoking only many muttered expletives.

After what feels like hours, but is probably only minutes faces emerge, framed in their own rectangle and assembled in front of you like a gameshow panel in a strangely decorated studio. There are welcoming smiles and the possibility of others yet. Who knows amongst an array of webcam settings? A nose here, a chin there, the very top of someone’s head. Who knew that a chair could be sat on in so many ways?

It’s orderly at first. One voice with instructions, an agenda and, worst of all, jobs to delegate. Maybe that explains the top of someone’s head? A cunning attempt at work avoidance that clearly I should have thought of first. I consider sliding down into my chair until I’m sat beneath my table.

Virtual hands are pointed out, to wave at the thought of a question. Mine will therefore be very much more virtual than others. Some things never change. Despite virtual hands, still a tangle of voices ensues as we relax into the familiarity of it all; the agenda temporarily capsizing in these rapids while the meeting floats aimlessly downstream. Familiar voices bring warmth, a smile and I consider something juvenile to get noticed, extend the laughter and take the meeting out of reach and off towards the sea. But order resumes, our professional heads fixed firmly in place as the bullet points are ticked off and a department is run at a distance safe enough for all. Strategies discussed, ideas shared, virtual hands waved and questions asked. After such a long time, even meetings can be enjoyable.

But all too soon it’s over and we settle back in our home ports, perhaps, like me, wondering what the next weeks and months hold and longing, ever so slightly, for just a few moments more.

I thought I’d conquered Teams after dipping my toe – my real one, not virtual – for the first time and being able to use it with ease. The first stanza tells you that I was wrong. Teams took forever to connect for my second meeting and I actually ‘arrived’ late, which in truth is much more like the real me anyway. In this instance though, it was nothing short of torture.

Once I was in attendance I took a look at my colleagues – the ladies I refer to as my big sisters – who I hadn’t seen in months. And while it was great to see faces, it was a veritable puzzle working out why they couldn’t use a webcam! It meant that for a good portion of the meeting I was just puzzled and distracted by the fact that someone was sat with just the top of their head in view, while others were so close to their webcam that I could just see a nose or an eye!

Despite the presence of virtual hands for people to raise when they had a question, our meetings would start in an orderly fashion, before descending ever so slightly into a gaggle of voices talking over each other. As usual in meetings, I kept quiet and observed from the safest distance I’ve ever managed in a meeting. But I realised, after a short while, that just being in the meeting was lovely. These were not just colleagues, but friends with familiar faces and voices that just relaxed me and made me feel quite normal for the first time in the months of lockdown. Even when we got back to the agenda I was enjoying the meeting.

In fact, I’d enjoyed it so much that when it ended and faces began to disappear from the screen, I felt more than a little bit low. And then it was back to isolating and trying to find enough things to do in order to keep myself from going mad.

Feel free to leave a comment about the poem and if you really enjoyed it you might like to click on the links below to have a look at some of my other stuff.

Poetry Blog – ‘A list of items that I bought but could not bring myself to properly use.’

This is another poem that was prompted by a sleepless night. I’ve had a lot of those lately. It’ll start off with just being uncomfortable, or too hot and then before I know it, my mind is racing and I know that if I don’t head downstairs and start writing things down, I’ll lose these ideas forever.

This poem came about because I started to think about the amount of things I buy and then don’t really use. Or rather, I use them – I’m not a complete idiot – but either nowhere near as much as I should or nowhere near early enough. I’m prone to getting them and then putting them away and all but forgetting they exist. Perhaps the poem can explain…

A list of items that I bought but could not bring myself to use properly…

Books have been a favourite for years, added to the weekly shop or gifted from an Amazon wishlist where they’d sat, forgotten about, until Christmas or birthdays. From there it would be off to a box in the loft and forgotten again. And while I’ll endeavour to read them deep into retirement, I’m already praying for someone to leave boxes of books to in my will.

Trainers are a similar addiction. My two feet will forever have a choice of pairs that run well into double figures, while not, in fact, running at all. And my two feet will never actually be enough. The thrill is in the chase. The irony is that the chase will not be performed in these under-used trainers.

Although in possession of what I feel is an unusually small head, I am somewhat obsessed with hats. Inevitably though, they will adorn my bonce but once, before embarrassment overcomes me and the charity shops feels the benefit.

A new jacket, on the other hand, will rarely be left to wait for a rainy day, unlike several fresh umbrellas now resident underneath the passenger seat of my car. Meanwhile, new shoes must stay boxed for as long as I can stand to wear the four other, older pairs in what is a perverse stance taken to kid myself that I’m getting my money’s worth out of said shoes.

Inhalers are collected and stacked, incongruous, in a drink’s cabinet, while I continue to use those that are long out of date, desperate to squeeze more life out of both of us, while stockpiling fresh cures as if saving for a particularly dusty, hazy day. Similarly, the artwork with the quirky quotes will forever fail to inspire or advertise how fun family life can be while they’re in a bag behind an armchair.

Chinos – always a good idea at the time – will remain stashed in a wardrobe, living up to their slim fit billing by squeezing expertly between suits. Occasionally, when I fancy a change, they will lay on the bed to be stared at, before being thrust back into storage as change is given a rest and I slide back into battered jeans.

And then there are the tiny ‘pint’ glasses, stolen from a bar in the good ‘ol U.S of A. Too small to be used, but too cool to be left behind in their rightful place. Or in fact bought.

And finally, let’s spare a thought, for the entire bathroom suite that was once stored upstairs in our house for months, because the trauma of finding a plumber meant it was easier to clamber over a bath taking residence in a back bedroom, than invite a tradesman to our house. For a while we were possibly the only house in Yorkshire with an unplumbed toilet sat on the landing. And maybe that’s a price worth paying for an claim as unique as that.

I think they call it ‘the thrill of the chase’. That feeling of excitement at getting something that then has a strange habit of wearing off once you’ve actually got it. People blame it for everything from the failure of a marriage or relationship to the reason that we all know that a pet is not just for Christmas. And I think partly, that’s what this poem’s about. Not pets, but the thrill of chasing shiny things and then almost instantly losing at least some of your interest. It’s generally attributable to me in our house, but I think we’re all perfectly capable of it too.

In my loft I have boxes of unread books. I have boxes of some of the ones I’ve read as well, that are too precious to pass on to charity or another willing reader, but I box them up and most likely won’t look at them again for years, if at all. The unread ones started as a small pile when I started working after university. And then disposable income happened. It’s a terrible habit and I must have four big boxes full of ‘to-read’ books. There are so many books in there that sometimes, when it’s time to choose my next one, I’ll discover something that I’d forgotten about entirely. And while this is a lovely surprise (although it can also be quite perplexing) it should also tell me that I need to cut down on the number of books I buy.

Some of the things that inspired the poem are things that I really have no use for. Hats are the best example. I don’t suit them as my head is more akin to a peanut and therefore hats swamp me. I mean, when was the last time you saw a peanut wearing a hat outside of a cartoon?

The point with this poem is that it could have been a much bigger poem. An epic poem about the least epic things you can think of. Believe it or not, I have got better at this as I’ve grown older. I used to buy a lot more. I never got full use out of any of it.

I’m quite proud of this poem. It’s a bit more of a rambling effort than usual – who knew that was possible – but I like it. And that isn’t always the case. But this poem brings back happy memories. For instance those stolen glasses mentioned in stanza 7 were purloined on a holiday to Boston and then packed away carefully inside towels and clothes in order to preserve them on the long flight home. We’ve never used them since getting them home, but I can still picture us sitting in the bar with mile wide grins on our faces because they looked so good and we were going to take them with us! Maybe I’ll get them out at home and just gaze at them, like an art installation…

I hope you enjoyed the poem. As always, I’d be interested to know people’s opinions, so feel free to leave a comment.

Sad, lonely shirt…

This is a poem I wrote about an item that I couldn’t avoid as I bumbled round our house during lockdown.
At the start of a working week I usually like to have some shirts ironed and ready to go. I just don’t like having to be ironing during the week. Anyway…
When I had to start isolating from work – several years ago, it feels like – I had one, ironed shirt left, hanging on the wardrobe door, ready for the next day. I would see it every day and it would remind me of what I was missing. The shirt became both a sad reminder that I couldn’t be in work and a comfort in that surely one day I would get to wear it again with a suit and tie. We would chat, me and the shirt. You know, in my head. Because sometimes being in lockdown wasn’t that easy.
I’m really not sure about this poem. I think I like it. It makes me smile and as time has passed I’ve been able to read it without thinking of myself as some kind of attention seeker.

Sad, lonely shirt

Sad, lonely shirt. I pass you every day and you remind me of where I should be, but am kept away from until it’s safe.
I see you and I wonder what you think about all of this.

“I’m still here,” you say and then you ask, “Why am I just hanging here?” And I say, “You wouldn’t understand.”
Quick as a flash you volley it back. “Why? I am a smart shirt.”
And with reasoning like that, coupled with the fact that I’m a soft touch I have no option but to explain.

You listen attentively – you’re hung on the side of the wardrobe, after all – as I try to explain the world amidst a global pandemic and how these days, without work, it’s leisure wear only for me.

You stare at me for a while, wanting to shrug, but unable to because I’m using my shoulders and you’re on a hanger. Then you say,
“Can I make some requests?”
I mull it over and then think, why not, before making it clear that I can’t do ‘just hold me’ because I couldn’t stand the creases and I will have to wear you again one day.

You look a little crestfallen and then say “OK” and then, “Maybe just two then?”
“Go ahead” I say.
You ask, not unreasonably, “Can you get rid of this dust off my shoulders, please? I’ve been here for weeks.”
Shamefaced, I take you down and gently brush it away. “What else?”
“Could you hang me in the wardrobe, next to my friends, please?”
And reasoning that the light grey suit must be your closest pal, I place you near to that.

I think mainly, this is a poem that was borne out of having too much time to think. It’s another one that woke me at night and forced me out of bed and I just wrote it down in my notebook, with not a great deal of thought. The words just seemed to be there. I really did find myself talking to the shirt if I passed it in our bedroom. Never out loud. But there was always a conversation of sorts.

If there’s any kind of intellectual aspect to it – and if you know me, there rarely is – the poem could be about our own self image and maybe the relationship we have with clothes. I love clothes, always have. I get it from my dad, who was quite the stylish young Mod in his pre-chidlren days. However, because I’ve always had a very slight frame, I’ve rarely felt confident in whatever I’ve worn. Body image, while never something that has been debilitating for me, has always been a bit of an issue. However, I always feel good in a suit, shirt and tie and I’m careful in what I choose to put together. This particular sad, lonely shirt is a bit of a favourite. Maybe others would have just got thrown in the wash, but this one stayed out, hung up, essentially reminding me that I still had a purpose.

There are a few lines in there that I’m quite proud of. I like the “I’m a smart shirt” line as it makes me smile when I read it back. Again, I suppose it works with the idea of a shirt having a personality and giving me confidence in the way that certain clothes can do. And then I liked the line about the shirt not being able to shrug. I suppose it might say something about the fact that clothes can’t actually do everything for us, as much as they might add to our confidence.

As an aside, I’m now back at work and I wore the shirt in my first week back. I’d like to think it was a day that we both enjoyed just a little bit more than usual!

Anyway, as ever I’d be interested to know what people think, so feel free to leave something in the comments.