Songs? Yes!
From apparently nowhere Friday's On My Mind popped up. At first, I thought The Mindbenders, but then no, surely it was The Easybeats, wasn't it? The point is, as a teenager, as an apprentice in a big, hot, and dirty factory, Friday was always on my mind. It just couldn't come quick enough.
Also, Friday night was usually our trip out night when we would set off to Ashton, or Oldham, or Sheffield, or Wakefield, or Leeds, or Manchester, or even Blackpool once or twice to Yate's Wine Lodge then the Tower Ballroom.
Always we were in search of a dance hall and bar, or bars, even Bier Kellers occasionally where you could drink steins of lager to our heart's content, then stand on the tables to sing along, raucously, with the Oompah Band.
Now Friday is our Poetry Review by Zoom, how times change. One day I might plot the Friday timelines from Holmfirth to Louth, and everywhere else in between. Friday was the day to start weekend overseas work trips when I worked in Leeds.
Management and I figured out that it was less expensive to put me up in a hotel over the weekend, plus a couple of extra nights, rather than pay the expensive midweek flight rates. Thanks to this arrangement I went on city-breaks to Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, Hannover...
That's enough nostalgia for now. It's time to pick out the poems for today's critical review, this is to be my offering:
On Reaching Calm
Roll a few balls of clay
Wheedle a few strings of clay
Write words from a book
A present thus twice received
Type up your own notes
Of words spoken on the move
Words of love, and life, and you
Before all of this; light the stove
Listen to Willie Nelson's Spirit - twice
Let the wax melt to create an aroma
Of the seashore, and the samphire
Warm the coffee on the hot plate
Read from Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness
Take everything in, or let everything float right on
Over your truly, deeply immersed, wholesale self
All for you, you, and your outstanding life
