Rossignols are nightingales

SONNET
Damnit,
I
really
do
miss
ski-ing







It wasn’t all delight. At Crans I caught
A tip, tearing my shoulder at the ball,
Cracking the socket, facing a distraught
One-armed descent to the Swiss wailing wall.
The joint was luxé, squawked the harridan,
Who urged me to relax and not to scream
As others yanked on this prone Englishman
And others totalled up his bill supreme.
Yes, I was paying for those future days
Of hissing skis maintained in parallel,
Of turns that contoured all of heaven’s ways,
Of moguls charged, of schusses flown pell-mell.
That written self I often left behind
Is now in muck and bitterness confined

NOTE: The last line of this sonnet previously contained a mildly naughty word. Now I am professionally and viscerally opposed to censorship but some filtering sofware on the computer my younger daughter uses meant she was unable to open the post. On the grounds that there might be other nannying systems out there I changed the word and (the better the day the better the deed) made two or three other small changes. Since all the people who patronise Works Well are of superior intellect it won't need much elbow-nudging from me to hint at which word was changed and what it was changed from. Thus everyone whose mission is Truth Upon Earth may make the substitution in their mind and conclude that it probably hardly matters at all.

In July, a second Spring.

Pretty dull, carpets? I’m not so sure. Recently we had the hall, stairs and landing carpets replaced and I found myself breaking off from the keyboard to watch Lewis at work. Cutting stuff into shape with his Stanley knife, positioning the awkward lengths with his knee-activated stretcher, folding the edges over neatly with a bolster worn smooth by his hands. A stapler also played a part. You don’t need many tools to lay carpets, just experience. It took Lewis a year to learn how to keep unwanted bubbles at bay.

Carpets grow old under your feet and you’re unaware of the process. We made the replacement decision when Mrs BB spotted a worn patch on the bottom stair. But it seemed such a small patch. Couldn’t I just colour the visible warp/woof? Mrs BB said no and I went along with her. After all we’re as rich as Croesus. It was only when I rolled up the discarded material in daylight, out on the driveway, that I realised how faded it was, and how the fading differed from area to area. A heck of a load for the dump.

It was Mrs BB who decided on stripes instead of a solid colour (see before and after). A marvellous decision. Hall and stairs are not only lighter; that part of the house has grown in volume.

I was reminded of March 1998 when we first moved into the then new house. We had furniture and beds, etc, but it felt like a cave. Only when the carpets were laid did it turn into a home. Yes carpets are boring but they frame our existence. And think what frames do for paintings.