This fell out of a book yesterday ... it must be at least 25 years old. Like me. It's also rather creased and crumpled .... like me. ... my daughter, when she was at secondary school, had to do some sort of homework, I think, doing a "shape poem", or something similar, but I finished up doing it, and this was the rough version. Here's it is written out properly ... I roam the seas with feet of rubber I feed on scraps of crabs and blubber eyes have I none, nowhere to go I heed the ocean's ebb and flow. A thousand razor teeth have I a thousand tiny feet to pry and preen, and all unseen I to and fro on foaming dream. Colder than stars, nor like a fish I have no will, nor any wish - you humans know me by this term - echinoderm, echinoderm. As you can see, I took myself much more seriously in those days.... didn't we all ? Did it get a decent mark ? I've no idea. I'm not even at all sure she handed it in. Such is the transience of fatherhood ! But I do think that "gannet" poem I put on here a while back is a sort of distant cousin to that one ... it's got the same sort of feel to it, but it's a deliberate "fake" poem , ascribed to a non-existent "author", Geraldine Harkness-Green, in an attempt to prove that "all bird poetry is crap." In that regard, it did its job I reckon. Here it is .... THE GANNET by Geraldine Harkness-Green. It swoops and steers above the wave and cares not for its steely tint it speeds its prey to gloomy grave its eye a thing of doom and glint haddock, mackerel, goby, sprat all shall perish, be sure of that as he dives with gleaming bill in amongst the teeming krill emerging from the surging sea triumphantly, triumphantly it speeds away to Skapa Flow on feathery wing, with eye aglow. ...and, they've both got 12 lines ... wooo ! And now, here's a beautiful Wir sind Helden song about being under the sea .... and it's a word video so you can sing along to it ... an "Echolot" in German = an echo-sounder, a sort of beacon .... and she likens it to a heart..... [Strophe I:] Halt still, das Bett ist ein Floß und ich Will raus auf's Meer, komm schneid es los Schau, unter uns flüssiges Blei Graue Schatten ziehen träge vorbei [Bridge:] Sterne und Wasser Und wir dazwischen Komm, wir schwimmen Mit den großen Fischen [Chorus:] Ich seh dein Herz, dein Echolot Schlägt Wellen in die See Ich seh dein Herz, ich weiß wir gehen Tiefer auf den Grund [Strophe II:] Komm schau, um uns tanzt glitzernder Staub Wir sinken selig und taub Stumm wartend und leise Ziehen Schatten engere Kreise [Bridge:] Sterne und Wasser Und wir dazwischen Komm, wir schwimmen Mit den großen Fischen [Chorus:] Ich seh dein Herz, dein Echolot Schlägt Wellen in die See Ich seh dein Herz, das bisschen rot Tut nicht lange weh [Outro:] Ich seh dein Herz, bleib noch nicht stehen Ich häng an deinem Mund Ich seh dein Herz, ich weiß wir gehen Tiefer auf den Grund And here's a thing ... completely unrelated to any of that.. half an hour ago I thought of a solution to 98% of the Irish border problem. Maybe 99%.
Here's what you do ... The vast majority of all those lorries going over the border will be carrying the same stuff every week... lorries full of cabbages, lorries full of spanners, lorries full of fish, lorries full of crisps, lorries full of ping-pong balls etc. There's be maybe 784 different sorts of consignments going through. Eek. So what you do is, you put a mix of all of that in one lorry. A box of ping-pong balls, 3 boxes of cabbages, 12 boxes of crisps, 20 spanners, 2 cases of fish. And the same in the next one. And the next one. And the next one ... and all those lorries will have a big number on them, 5 for example. Only one of those "5"s will need to be checked. The others can go through, because they're all the same inside. There might be the odd one checked at random just to make sure there's no skulduggery going on. There might be other sorts of mixes. A "3" might have a standard "mix" of balls of string, cakes, wardrobes, bibles, woolly jumpers and ski-poles. They'd only need to stop one of them. Once the system was embedded, maybe only 1 a week. Or one a month. Of course, there's be the odd, non-standard one-off sort of lorry carrying, maybe, a consignment of live sharks, or 27 Jum-Jum trees, or starfish, or 8000 pointed hats , wizards for the use of. They'd have to be inspected. But there won't be many of them. Once the system got going they might only have to check, say, 12 lorries a day ... no big deal. Now I'm not wanting anything for this terrific idea. I'm just saying. And if it does the job, they can have the idea free of charge. I'm a generous, if rather peculiar, old Hector ! Later .... you won't believe this, but it's true .... after writing about that consignment of pointy hats ( witches for the use of), when I logged out, an advert popped up featuring a rather alluring young lady wearing a witch's pointy hat. So, naturally, I saved it, intending to stick it on here.... but eerily, it didn't save... oooooh ! So I've substituted something similar. It did happen.... would I lie to you ?
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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