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The Book of Write-On: Day Five

Another trip to Chipping Norton.  I went in a bit later today because I wanted to do a bit of cleaning around the cabin.  Also, I had to wash out the wheelie bin because it was crawling with maggots.  On Monday I foolishly used it to dispose of a dead rabbit whose entire top half had been eaten by either man, wild beast or spritely but ferocious lickle miniature dachshund we call Juno.  Juno, bad dachshund!  We’re mad-not-mad.  Here, have a treat!  Oh, you're full up?  I wonder why!  Poor rabbit.  It'll be teased to high heaven by all his dead rabbit friends if it turns out that Fluffy was ripped to shreds by a dog some ladies carry around in their handbags. 

I picked it up by the foot – a rabbit’s foot is meant to be lucky.  I’ve never really thought about it, but it’s only lucky for the human in possession of it.  Like a blood diamond, a rabbit either died or forever hobbled in the making of this lucky charm.  Humans: you should bloody well know better!  You and your brains deciding that a rabbit’s foot is lucky.  You just made that up.  You make something up and rabbits and habitats and all sorts of important ecological things get destroyed because of that silly made-up rules and superstitions and things you just made up.  Millions of rabbits are dead because you decided that's it good to be superstitious.  It's not good for the rabbit!  Millions of horses have missing shoes because of you! 

Anyway, I threw half-Fluffy in the bin on two of the hottest days of the year and what happened?  Of course you know what happened - you've got as destructive and messed up a human brain just like I have!  The maggots got to them.  And you know what: I wasn’t even mad at the maggots because they’re just doing their job.  There was half-Fluffy in a scorching hot bin, minding its own dead mauled-by-a-dachshund business.  It’s like the maggots had just won the lottery.  I don’t know much about maggots but what I do know is that if you’re going to give them an opportunity to decompose a dead thing inside a bin that's hotter than hell, they’re not going to wait around out of courtesy for the go-ahead.  They're not going to politely sit around the pool.  They're going to jump right in!  So fair play, maggots.  Sorry I had to spoil your fun but you were crawling all over the dang place and you would've given the housekeeper a terrible fright.  To their credit, they did some great work.  If I’d left it another day, there wouldn’t have been any of half-Fluffy left.  What a shift they put in.  

So I got dachshund-mauled and maggot-mauled half-Fluffy by its unlucky lucky foot and flung it down a bank.  Then I flushed out those maggots out of the bin good and proper.  They'd won the maggot lottery.  Most lottery winners crash and burn so why should these Maggot Lottery-winning maggots be any different? That’s enough about dead rabbits and maggots.  This is meant to be a civilised diary about my month-long writing sabbatical and it’s descended into maggot-talk already. It’s enough to put anybody off their breakfast.   

Fast forward to the cinema and cue the trumpet fanfare!  I have bought my first cinema ticket at this comfy-seated house of sound and moving picture synchronicity!  Hooray!   At 2pm on Thursday, I am going to see a South Korean film called Past Lives.  South Korean film holds a special place in my heart because Kim ki-Duk’s 2004 film 3-Iron was one of the first world cinema films I fell in love with.  And it was the first film I saw at the Cheltenham Film Society back in 2005.  Wikipedia calls both films a “romantic drama film”.  I am excited for the romance, the drama and the film.  It’s still Tuesday.  Plenty of time to brush up on my South Korean.  The only trailer for Past Lives that I could find on YouTube was dubbed in American.  I know it won’t be dubbed.  The Living Room cinema is too classy to have Americans talking all over it.  Chill out, Tom.  Don’t worry - it’ll be subtitled and you’ll get to hear and read their lovely voices.  You know that for sure, do you?  I’m almost certain.  If it’s dubbed, I’m walking out and asking for my money back, okay?  That’s fine, but don’t make a scene.  I won’t make a scene but I won’t be happy and they’ll know I’m not happy.  I’ll give my popcorn back as well, but I'll eat most of it first.   I’m not paying £16.50 to watch South Koreans with American accents.  It’s late and I think it’s time you went to bed. 

Okay, but one final note: having finished FUNNY HA HA yesterday, I began reading 24 Stories of Hope for Survivors of the Grenfell Tower Fire.  It contains a story by J.L Hall called The Mărțișore and that story was the reason I borrowed it from the library.  J.L is my new writing mentor and I wanted to get a taste of her own work.  It’s an excellent short story.  I read it straight away, along with a few others she recommended.  I’ve had three sessions with her so far and will reconvene in October.  After an hour or so reading the first two or three stories in that collection, I moved onto a poem I started over a year ago.  I like a poem with an enforced structure or set of rules and this one goes through the alphabet.  So it was quite simple to complete but it’s still very much in its first draft stage.  It might rely on some enthusiastic audience participation to elevate it!   


Spirit Undimmed! 


Acrobats in the attic room,

Spirit undimmed!

Beehive in your bathtub,

Spirit undimmed!

Crows cawing curses,

Spirit undimmed!

Day full of daggers,

Spirit undimmed!

Engine goes pop-bang,

Spirit undimmed!

Frog in your pocket,

Spirit undimmed!

Ghosts in gunfights,

Spirit undimmed!

Hands missing handles,

Spirit undimmed!

Ink on the wedding dress,

Spirit undimmed!

Jittery jetpack,

Spirit undimmed!

Knots in your kneecaps,

Spirit undimmed!

Legs in the arm holes,

Spirit undimmed!

Maggots in your meal deal,

Spirit undimmed!

Nipples dipped in nitrate,

Spirit undimmed!

Overdo the chicken stew,

Spirit undimmed!

Panic in public,

Spirit undimmed!

Queasy in the dinner queue,

Spirit undimmed!

Red sock in a white wash,

Spirit undimmed!

Snakes eating ladders,

Spirit undimmed!

Trumpets at midnight,

Spirit undimmed!

Vacuum explodes,

Spirit undimmed!

Whistles from witches,

Spirit undimmed!

X marks the wrong spot,

Spirit undimmed!

Yeses rare as yetis,

Spirit undimmed!

Zero in the bank account,

Spirit undimmed! 

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