DIGGING - Heaney

I could work out a pun about my reading and 'digging' Seamus Heaney. 

In fact, I did know his Digging poem and ... this will show you how much mulch has been shredded  ... when I first came across it I was immediately struck by the lines, 

"Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun."

and there are references to the old man's wielding of a spade and nice parallels drawn between the poet's life and the digger, blah blah.

Digression ~ goddamit, I hadnt realised I'd snapped my nemesis. How very interesting.

That is probably one of the millions of moments when I had foolishly stayed around too long and the blah blah had reverted to default dementia repeatia such as

"See that bush down there, ... [fill in whatever was needed to be done with the bush] "

Or worse - and I soon developed a boiler-plate reaction - "I know what I meant to say, next time you happen to have your clippers handy ..."

To which I would hold up my hand and probably be walking away in disgust:

"First off, they are not my clippers, just as it's not MY fucking hobby ... so forget it! I never 'happen to have' any reminders of your pastime around because there is a very real danger of them jogging your memory and the next thing I know, it's MY time being passed and squandered.
The clippers never happen to be handy because I've learned my lesson and hurl them out of sight at every opportunity."  

[memo to self - take photo of the clippers wherever they are, if not absorbed into Kostas' armoury, and post it as imaginative illustration. But I digress]

       Heaney Connection ~ Even in the early days,  before the CareGiver nonsense and thievery, I knew my mother enjoyed gardening and I probably treated myself to fanciful images of her maternal Lady of the Loam with me indoors, tapping contentedly at a safe distance. Cultivating my own 'garden' of neatly lined chapters and herbaceous paragraphs.

Even tho' - or perhaps because - I knew nothing about gardenry and no one rammed it down my gullet, I could entertain thoughts about the hobby and make the right noises when polite company came to visit.

I do now remember that time and Heaney's death jogged the memory button.

Very strange and in a way sad: seven years' forced slogging on that treadmill has distanced and alienated me so completely that when an old simperer phoned today to check I'd be in so she could pop in and see if there was anything salvageable for her to take for her own garden, I didnt have to calculate a lie, I just said I'd be out, the gate closed, blah flucking blah, security, faff, lie.

No big deal for the hopeful gardener friend of mum's but a chance for me to put a retrospective boot in.

So half my brain is obliterated where anything to do with my mother's hobby is concerned ... OK, cheap price to pay.

Commentaria - another perfectly pitched pertinentissimus from the Sage of  rue la démocratie ~ or, and let's go out on a limb and provoke a correction from my Fragrantly Harboured kin, 民主街.

By the comments of Copernicus! As I keep saying to the point of ad murderous nauseam demented repetition, it's the donnish contributions that keep this bleaty blog top of the charts.

 Callow 'meanour - One good turn deserves another so, seeing as how it's Septembrios 1 and we're calling a spade a brutha, let me crown this page with a delicate ditty from days of yore. I met minstrel d'Onegan when he came out to Hong Kong with Monsignor Bilque as part of a far east tour to boost the flagging coffers and open new markets in the colonies and Land of the Rising Sun.

I interviewed Lonnie for the South China Morning Post and delicately enquired how he'd gone down with Johnny Nip. Apparently, surprisingly well. Hai! They're so inscrutably polite they'll applaud anything, won't they?

But in Hong Kong, they were a succès fou; my dears, went down une bombe positive.

The gig at the Foreign Correspondents' Club ... actually I dont remember much about that night, OK I remember the night, it's the morning that's un peu fuzzy. Got back around 4am and caught hell from my Carrie.

 Furieuse, she was, livide. I bought her a conscience-stricken bijou Tissot time-piece; that shows you how recently married we were. Dudes! We've all been there, so quit that smirking.

Good times.