Dancing With My Daddy

My dear departed,

You knew things

that you never told.

A person lived inside you,

who only found life,

when you danced.

Danced and danced,

with your children 

to music that gave you life and joy.

As I glance back,

I see the hook and crook,

of your love,

Another glance, see a moment

bespoke to you

the mischievous glimpse,

That I wish to see again,

I am longing for your dance of joy,

A tree of life, no longer climbed or vaulted.

A tree that dancingly spread its seed,

And tossed out branches and leaves,

Into the fern gully of your dreams daddy.

For that was it,

A life dreamed, realised in

a scribbled scrap that amounted to:

Hard work and love.

That person inside you

Came to life with your love for us and for music.

Now I understand and see it,

In myself, I'm your dream realised,

A blessed child, 

who knows it now in her fruit.

Built in Obsolescence

So the fan oven has packed up, I've only had the cooker for two years. It really is a disgrace, everything built in obsolescence.

And I don't know whether I can deal with it as I'm still recovering from the death of the fridge freezer. When it happened I thought, It's ok I have insurance, if they can't fix it I'll get a new one. 

Due to Covid you can't speak to a person, so I went online and managed to navigate myself through to report my fault. I was told that I had to wait two weeks for an engineer, fair enough. Two weeks later the engineer arrives, I was at work so my son dealt with him, the fridge freezer had been certified dead; not so bad, I'd had it a long time and never liked it. 

I get back from work and my son tells me that the engineer said that he will report the death of the said white goods. 

Two weeks went by and I heard nothing, so I hunted everywhere on the website and finally found a person I could talk to. I was on hold forever. Then it transpires that the death of my fridge freeze had not been reported to the insurance company. it would need to be reported. Well I suggested that I was reporting it now. No it had to be reported by the engineer. Did I know him? I told her I had no relationship with him at all, as it had been my son who had dealt with him. There was nothing on their system, they would put me through to repairs. On hold again for even longer than before, then finally I'm through to another person.

I tell the story of the fridge freezer's death again and I am asked for and give them the engineers work number. At this point I am at breaking point, nearly forty minutes on the phone and the issue is no further forward to being resolved. That is when the woman on the other end of the phone made a mistake, she probably did not know the journey I'd been on since that fatal day when the fridge freezer died.

No idea about the vegan cheese, the ice bag hanging from the handle of the window, or the milk on the patio and then there was Mr Fox, in broad daylight sniffing out some thing, well I ran him off. All this in December, the thought of no fridge for Christmas!

She said 'I'll just phone them for you' I said 'For me! you're not doing it for me! It's your job.' I could see a lightbulb going on in her head , that I was a customer and it was her job to help me. She did her job after that, in fact she became overly friendly and I like to think that it was by some way of an apology. 

All the time I's been on hold, I'd been working out how much insurance I had paid and it wasn't pretty. I had paid ten times the worth  of the fridge freezer in insurance payments and what service had I received for it? Nothing. Never once had a repair.

Anyway the cooker is insured as well, they should be able to replace the fan quite easily...I imagine.

 

My lockdown tree has been pollard,

Now I can no longer see her branches,

Waving at me and  swaying in the lockdown breeze.

She was a smile to me,

A location on the map,

from the window of my world.

A reassuring, smiling, waving friend.

My life has been punctuated by trees,

Sunblind I climbed as a child.

Believing that the tree belonged to me,

My ladder to the neighbour's gardens,

Sour figs dangled from those branches now dead.

All trees that I have known

that died will never be forgotten

by me and all her roots.

My lockdown friend

will bloom to life in the Spring,

With whispers on the rustling wind.

With spikey branches spouting

from her fisted stumps,

And they too will smile and wave,

And say we are here too

in lockdown with you.

Isolation 

A crooked square of sky,

The canopy of a tree,

The drift of cloud,

A street light on an empty street,

illuminates the silence.

When the sky is blue,

And when the sun shines,

A dual aspect

My isolation is

a glorious place.

A longitude of peace prolonged pervades,

In a stagnant world of Covid,

Yes life interrupted,

But solitude is not a chore,

It is the gift of serenity.

Bananas are not for me

What is the obsession and love of bananas all about? I have never liked bananas, I do not like the smell, the taste the texture. I was traumatized as a child by an incident with a banana.

I was a proud Brownie on a day trip to Little Foxley, it's a place I've never heard of anyone visiting, it seems we went on a day trip to a field! It was a long coach trip and I had  a packed lunch, the usual cheese sandwich, drink and for some inexplicable reason my mother had forgotten that like her I detested bananas, I suppose it wasn't really her fault she had five children and had no time for picky eaters, you ate what you were given. 

Anyway I digress, the banana was over ripe and exploded in my cloth bag, such was the extent of the explosion that my cheese sandwich tasted of banana and worst of all  the book that I always had in my bag was covered in squashed banana. But that was not the pinnacle of my trauma, because when I tried to deal with the explosion my Brownie uniform got covered too. I was so proud of my uniform but banana stains on brown fabric is not a good look and Brown Owl gave me a look that said she was not impressed by my appearance.  I had to sit on that coach with the smell of banana., all the way there and all the way back.  I think that this was when a mere dislike turned into a hatred. 

Since that traumatic day I have avoided any contact with that yellow devil. I remember when I had my second job and someone put a banana skin in my bin, I spent the day gagging and ever since then I have made sure that people who work with me know the rules of engagement. But people are very brazen, in my current office I explained my situation, but the colleague who sits next to me is very blase, she eats a banana every day in front of me and she is not the only one, when she has an over ripe one she laughingly apologises but openly eats it in front of me. 

Another colleague seemed to be doing some kind of scientific experiment and left a banana on the window sill until it went completely black, I had to intervene when it began to attract fruit flies, the only reason I did so was because she no longer worked in our office. and many of my colleagues took pleasure in pointing it out while refusing to deal with it.

it's not just that, people seem to think that dropping banana skins on the street is OK, on my walk to work one morning I spotted banana skins, on the pavement, draped over parking ticket machines and even found one on my doorstep where someone must have hurled it. 

During lockdown people were going wild about baking banana bread and I have been offered their creations. How many times? I don't eat! I don't drink it1 I don't like it! And I don't think banana bread is even proper baking, all that mush.

As a child my son knew the rules, if I bought him bananas he had a limited time period when he could eat them, I used to buy bananas that were almost green. I would carefully monitor the fruit bowl and warn him when the little black flecks would appear. But he would visit his father at weekends and would leave the bananas behind and they would soon start to create a smell and a sickening atmosphere in my little kitchen. So I deprived him of that fruit. Now as a young adult he has discovered smoothies and I am once again buying bananas. he even had the temerity to flaunt his consumption of bananas and event tried to get me to taste his smoothie, and I thought this could be the aversion therapy I need, but as soon as I put the glass to my mouth the smell made me gag.  

Then there is the more sinister side of things, I was dogged with racism at school and constantly called a monkey and offered bananas by my tormentors, someone I know refused to eat bananas in public after experiencing the same sort of racism that I did, she says she won't  give the racists the satisfaction of seeing her eat one, which I found really funny. I remember seeing bananas being thrown onto a football field during a televised football match all these years later racism is still associated with bananas on the football pitch, because it's still happening.

Bananas are  just not for me, mangoes, apples, oranges yes, bananas, no! no! no! no!