Run away up to the shops. She said.

Back with a packet of posh biscuits.
 
To be arranged in ritual on best china,

the plate with gold and magenta petals.



Arranged from the centre piece of green

foil-wrap chocolate, fanning out with

snowflake arms of custard creams, jellied

diamonds, bourbons and fluffy wafers.



Brought in with the careful tread of

ceremony, to the Important Visitor.

The promoted waiter about to wash the

Lord's feet. Best offerings to the priest.



Retreating then to the sliding door, half

in the kitchen and half out the living room.

On call for more waiting. For the eventual,

the inevitable weakening, or noticing.



For The Visitor to offer the plate. Shaming

of the green-foil biscuit. Waiting for the

chorus of the performance. "Ye'd think ye

were starved. Making a holy show of me".

Priscilla precisely sat. (Crossing her pins most nicely.)

Everything in its place. And a place for everything.

Look in my cupboards and see. Tins in lines of columns

and rows. (Soldiers to the palace - no place to go).

Tomatoes, chick peas and beans. And then the sardines.

Cornered to the right. Six for tomatoes, five in a row for

the sunflowers (nearest and dearest to the door with the light).

Everything in its place. And a place for everything.


Pick up a tin, any tin, and not a dirt sticky ring to be seen.

No excuse at all not to clean. No excuse at all not to gleam.

Her pinny scrubbed like a bumble bee. The bleach on its blistered knees.

Just look in my cupboards and see.  Trace your finger between the rows.

No mouldy bug or crawly slug.  Check your fingers and see what I mean.

No dirt at all to be seen. Even the dust is clean.

Everything in its place. And a place for everything.


Nothing intruding, extruding or slightly moving.

That's what it takes to be clean. Priscilla, the domestic preen.

"Sit down you're making the palace untidy",

 (Now do you see what I mean?)




 



(Photographs of Castleward House, 1767 in Alain de Botton's:

The Architecture of Happiness. p44-45)


For the art of artful compromise, take note

of the aristocrats who put compromise in stone.

With equal wills and equally opposite tastes

they would not agree on the style of their home.

Arms crossed, neither would budge - and in their

equal and opposite force a balance was struck.

The architect bowed to the force of their wallets

and the force of their will. And gave in. Cooked

up a plan never seen before in any book north or

south of Strawberry Hill. He designed a two-faced

mansion joined by dotted lines along the scalp.

The join visible only by parting the hair. Taste

for two sorted in a carnival of artful compromise.
 
She got her way facing the back. The pinnacles

and windows making their most triangular point.

The roof in the style of a castle. (So fanatical

was she about the gothic look). He got his way
 
facing out. With columns in classical proportions

and bays and the roof on his side (the front) in the
 
style of a roman villa. The verdict? A distortion.

An ugly monstrosity. A waste of good money.

Viscount Bangor and Lady Blithe agreed to differ

with public opinion. The house was perfect for their

conditions. (But what would they have for dinner?)







Little Bo Peep closed her eyes for a while

"I'll just rest my lids, leave my crook on the side".

Then after a bit she opened them wide,

Her dream so beguiling, she was checking for size.



Heading all round-about, the fields for her sheep

For her lovely white flock, with the Persil white fleece.

Where had they gone, these perfect-wash sheep?

And who were these grazing, looking nothing like neat?




She was checking again, poking sleep from surprise

Who were these gazing with their unguent eyes?

Blinking again, she saw what was not

Her flock had gone off, or been changed for this lot.



And who were these gazing, in dappled coat clothes?

A dalmatian type dapple, like milk spilt on crows.

And what was there staring, in her field for her sheep

Was a flock of small cows, with the smallest of feet.

Jonathan Trappe had a dream, sitting in his office swivel chair,

gazing vacantly out of the window. He imagined taking to the air.

Just taking off; buying fifty-five huge helium balloons;

a fantasia of reds, whites, greens, yellows and blues.

And he saw himself in slow motion frames, inflating each one,

tying each with string, hefting a huge clod of a stone to put on

the swivel seat, so that the balloons wouldn't lift it away,

not yet, at any rate; not until all fifty-five were tied in place.

A cacophony on the arms of his chair, a bored filing cabinet grey.




And then he imagined easing the stone off, right down to the date.

He could see it now. Raleigh, North Carolina, June 7th, 2008.

Early morning, commute time to work, half past eight.

And that was it. He decided this dream could not be late.

And so he left for a coffee break and walked at brisk pace

to a shop in the town centre, staring at his reflection facing

him in the window, beyond to the bright glare of party games;

striding in, he picked fifty-five huge helium balloons; matter of factly

paying for them, with no fuss, like it was an everyday activity.




The next day, he left work, and took to the air, in his office chair.