Hung on a Line

I had forgotten just how good it is to touch and smell washing that has been hung on a line and dried in sun and breeze. It is wonderful!

Ferret and Teen had invited me to Gloucester for the weekend, for a BBQ at their house. I had told Teen that I probably wouldn’t be able to make it as I had a load of laundry that I needed to catch up on. Teen said I could bring it with me and do it at their place; something she would later deny (probably on account of how much of it there was!). I had driven down in the morning, did a Cava run to Morrison’s, and was now throwing Boules with Ferret and Paul; my washing flapping on the line, drying in the mid afternoon sun, that was beating down with no mercy.

Ferret and Teen’s garden goes slightly up hill and, as a consequence, it is stepped in places. During the game, occasionally when a long marker was thrown, one or more of the boules (weighing over half a kilo) would drop over the ledge, to where Teen’s tortoises were obliviously eating lettuce and slices tomatoes on the lower level, tucked out of sight at the bottom of the drop. What charmed lives they have, every stray boule missed them. I am not really sure how you could have told if they had been hit, except by a crack in the shell or something, as they display no detectable signs of intelligence. All they seem to do is tear at lettuce with their little beak like mouths and mount each other with great regularity. That has to rate as one of the most disgusting sights ever, a beaky tortoise with its wrinkly neck stretched and straining upwards, cracking together shells as he mounts what ever it is. I am not a fan.

I won two games and we went to sit in the shade and have a cold beer. Ferret asked me what I had been up to and I recapped on a few things; my mum's latest scares; the girlfriend I hadn’t seen for 23 years; the text from the South African barmaid; the ‘no show’ from Special Needs at the Half Moon on Thursday (I was hoping she would turn up, but alas….); the email from Lisa, the girl from the internet who was a captain in the Zimbabwean Army in 1990 and wants to meet me but I am having cold feet; and Sylvie, who did turn up at the Half Moon on Thursday evening and wants me to play Harp on a couple of track of an album she is making, but it is beginning to look very much like that is all she wants. I told Ferret that I was rethinking my game plan about everything. I told him that I am very happy at this moment in time and I can’t believe that actually meeting and getting off with any of these or any other women that collide with my life, or though bringing elements of pleasure and maybe some positivety, it would inevitably bring an end to my current happiness. He said he could only do a long weekend in Transylvania.

Dave and I played guitar and harmonica around a brazier in Ferrets garden until 2 am then went to bed. I got up early, showered and drove back to Oxford in the sunshine. I had to open the Half Moon at 12 midday for the Sunday session. It was a very quiet one and when I finished at five I went home, ate some food, and fell asleep reading a book. The last thing I remembered was thinking ‘I must give up smoking’.

+=+=+=+

When I met 'Special Needs' the other Saturday, I wrote my number and the address of the Half Moon on the back of one of my poems. I went to hand it to her but her mate grabbed it instead. This was the poem. I like it, it's a love poem.

You Make Me Cum

You make me cum in colours
Like a Jackson Pollock canvas
Like Van Gogh's skies and his starry nights
Like Yves Klein's blues
Picasso’s hues
And Warhol's shoes
You mix me up
and lay me down
You make me cum in colours