234.Gifts

From an idea on

 http://memeexpress.blogspot.com/ 

(See 233. for my SUNDAY SCRIBBLINGS  offering.)

I feel quite sad when my grandchildren open their Christmas gifts. Of course they're excited, of course they're grateful. But, with us, it was a once-a-year time of indulgence, and so it was particularly magical. As I was writing this poem I could feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck!

GIFTS

Do you recall a time when gifts were little things and cheap?

How Santa travelled light and saw you lying there asleep?

How a stocking was a stocking and it didn't weigh a tonne

And an orange in the toe was quite a prize that would be won?

How you woke up very early and sat up in your bed

With a thousand dreams of avarice circling in your head?

And how, in morning darkness, you felt that awkward bulge,

Which, in the coming daylight, something magic would divulge?

It might be a tiny dolly in a little knitted dress!

Oh that would bring the ultimate in childish happiness!

It might be a book of stories, just a tiny little book!

You couldn't wait for daylight! You just had to have a look!

You scrabbled round in darkness; the shape was hard, not soft,

Then guiltily you felt inside and held your gift aloft.

By feeling and by squinting you made your present out!

Why! Santa had excelled himself this year without a doubt!

It was a game of 'Tiddlywinks!' to play on Christmas Day!

You could practise in the morning! Mollee, too, could play!

Then you silently replaced the gift exactly as before,

And pretended to be fast asleep! Maybe you tried a snore!

A boxed game and an orange! Christmas promised bliss!

Do little children of today ever experience this?

233. I Knew Instantly.....

This is my response to this week's SUNDAY SCRIBBLINGS prompt.

What makes it more personally poignant is that we had flown over New York only days before!

I KNEW INSTANTLY.....

I knew instantly….

For most it happened in the blaze of day;

The city bustle made it more Apolalyptic!

For me it happened in the smooth, velvety darkness

Of an Australian night.

I habitually tune-in to British radio

Before I sleep.

No music;

Just the lulling accent

Of my own childhood

Winging it's way over the thousands of miles.

That Britishness is my lullaby,

My return to the womb.

The melifluous tones

Suddenly took on a new urgency!

'We now take you to New York!'

No lullaby now!

I was awake,

Lying wide-eyed on my pillow.

I shook my husband.

'Wake up!' I cried;

'Something has happened in New York!'

He grunted and turned over.

'Tell me in the morning' he grumbled

'I was almost asleep.'

Thus it was I crept downstairs

To the television set;

Dimmed light

Dimmed sound.

The smooth velvety darkness

Of an Australian night.

Thus it was I saw

The second plane hit

The second tower!.

For me it was almost peaceful!

So quiet,

So unreal,

So far away.

But, within me,

Wild turmoil.

The whole world should have

Felt my heart-beat.

For I knew, instantly…..

The world had changed for ever.

(My SIMPLY SNICKERS entry is number 234)

Enough Trillions!

1.
ENOUGH TRILLIONS!

Count one! It takes a second; maybe even less;

Even a baby can count to one with very great success.

Time to take a little breath, time to blink an eye.

You just can't make it stretch-out, even if you try.

10.

Count ten! A little longer: A few words could be said;

Or perhaps you take that length of time to climb into your bed.

Clean your teeth? Well, maybe, I think there's time for that.

And a count of ten is time enough to give your dog a pat.

100.

Add another nought and now's the time for you to concentrate!

A hundred takes much longer, so life will have to wait.

It takes that long to wash your hair or make a cup of tea,

Or to pick those lovely apples that are hanging on the tree.

1000.

Now we start talking business! From three digits to four.

We're counting to a thousand and that's a whole lot more.

In the time it takes to count it you could weed a garden path,

Or even have a pleasant lazy luxury bubble-bath.

1000000.

Now let's leap up to a million. More noughts? Well, only three,

But now you're counting ones full-time! How boring that will be!

For  twelve whole days, and nights as well, you'll have to sit and count,

For as we know a million is a very large amount.

1000000000.

Then what about a billion? We're in the stratosphere!

You'll have to count and count and count for many a dreary year.

If you start-off when you're twenty-one  by the end you'll be fifty-four !

Yes thirty-three years you'll be counting! You might find that a bore!

1000000000000.

Wait for it! Here's the big one; a trillion has twelve noughts!

Something a human being cannot picture in his thoughts.

Think of thirty-three thousand years! Doesn't that blow your mind!

Think of all those years ahead or all those years behind!

Think of the generations, from cavemen up to you!

And counting, counting all the time until the task was through!
Thirty-three thousand years it takes! Can you believe your ears?
Can you even imagine counting for all those years?

So when the clever money-men present their machinations

Watch-out for the small word 'trillion' in their tricky calculations!

231. Stationmaster!

Possibly the world's best gimmick! And all it costs is cat-food! A true and on-going story.

 STATIONMASTER! 

If you're a struggling city or an ailing corporation

And you are in a penniless and failing situation,

And you're looking for a way out and you don't know what to do,

And the puzzled Chief Executives just haven't got a clue

The Wakayama Railway is quite well-worth looking at,

The Wakayama Railway and the cat.

Now the the Kishigawa Line was losing money every day,

However hard they tried they simply couldn't make it pay.

The customers were very few, they much preferred to drive,

And the Kinokawa railway station seemed but half alive.

The Station-Master couldn't help but feel quite insecure.

He said 'I'm going to lose my job, for sure.'

One day a cleaner carried in a fluffy cat, a stray,

And little did they realise it was their lucky  day.

The tortoiseshell was friendly and so, very soon, installed,

And Tama was the name by which that little cat was called.

At night she slept with Toshiko in a nearby grocery store,

In a cosy little basket on the floor;

But, by day, she walked the platforms with an air of feline grace,

And she seemed to know the station was her very special place.

'She acts just like a Stationmaster!' somebody remarked,

For her manner of authority was very clearly marked.

So they made a little Stationmaster's cap to fit her head!

'She looks perfect now!' the railway people said.

Things would have ended there, but a little girl espied

The Stationmaster Cat when  she was going for a ride.

And the next day she invited all her friends to come and see

The cat at Kinokawa , which was cute as it could be.

And the cat was very friendly and came up to them and purred.

And that is how the miracle occurred.

The people flocked to Kinokawa, just to see the cat!

Train-loads came to see her! What do you think of that!

The railway trade increased by quite a large percentage plus!

The Kishigawa line had far more takers than the bus!

And Tama still paraded like a proper little pro,

In her cap she kept parading to and fro.

Now Tama is world-famous, well, at least in all Japan,

And everyone is keen to see her, if they find they can.

She's had stories written round her, she's been featured on TV,

There's lots of merchandising and some great publicity.

And all she has to do is be a normal sort of cat,

But one who's in Stationmaster's hat!

The coffers of the town have swelled and seem to keep on swelling,

And where it's going to end, well, there is simply just no telling!

They even have some carriages for giving special rides

And these carriages have little Tama painted on the sides!

So if you find your finances are falling rather flat,

Get ahead! It's easy! Get a cat!

230. Lost Limpopo

I always remember the Tuli area as being in Rhodesia, and this is how I describe it in this memoir. Now I read of it in association with Botswana! Maybe we crossed the river. Maybe we strayed into Botswana and nobody thought to mention it! I only know that my poem reflects a Rhodesian experience.


So different from the Zimbabwean experience of today! No doubt the game is still there. Let's hope so.

(The photograph is a modern travel-guide one but it strikes the right note.)


LOST LIMPOPO

The 'great, grey, green, greasy' river

Of Kipling's day

Is now infected with cholera!

The wild country I loved,

Which was once called Rhodesia,

Is infected with madness.

Turn back the clock!

Gwanda was a small gold-mining town.

I taught there,

Raw English from London!

The Whites (this was the 1950s)

Constituted a sort of enclave;

The Teachers,

The Hospital Staff

And the Police.

All White, of course.

The vastness of Africa stretched forever around us;

Weekends could be heavy with humidity

And soporific with boredom.

'Let's hunt the giraffe!'

One of the Policemen would say.

We would pile in the back of a Police Truck

And head South for the Limpopo River

And the Tuli Reserve.

No guns;

Just binoculars.

The giraffe had three legs

And was a local celebrity!

The Tuli Reserve was full of game;

Not  yet a Game Reserve.

No huts, no air-conditioning, no guided tours.

Just game, wild and free.

Permits?

What were permits?

The great memory is the Night Memory.

We chose to visit Tuli one night.

The Police Truck had a large spotlight on the front.

We made for the air-strip.

We parked.

We waited.

We turned-off the spotlight.

Gradually, the wild animals,

Which had fled at the sound of our arrival,

Returned.

Elephant, giraffe, wildebeest, zebra

Moved on to the airstrip to feed.
Scores of them, mingling.

We moved slowly.

We began to circle the air-strip;

The spotlight dazzled,

Lighting the whole area.

We drove faster and faster.

We chased those glorious animals

Round and round the air-strip

Until, finally, they all moved back into the bush.

The sight of those animals,

Lit unnaturally,

Their flanks moving rhythmically

As they ran,

Is with me still.

We were young and thoughtless.

Maybe we were cruel.

Who knows?

Now refugees swim the mighty river
Carrying cholera.

 We were so ALIVE!

Alive where there now is death.

229. Uncle's Upside-down!

More ABC WEDNESDAY nonsense for children! Letter 'U' of course.

(See my PLUS blog for my pictorial 'U' entry.)

UNCLE'S UPSIDE-DOWN!

Uncle's upside-down, I can see his toes!

Life is always lots of fun wherever uncle goes.

He'll suddenly fall over and I'll be underneath!

Run, run, run, run! He'll lose his false teeth!

Uncle's upside-down, underneath the ground!

His grubby face has disappeared! I can't see it around!.

He's grumbling and mumbling and all the people stare!

Run, run, run, run! He'll lose his underwear!

Uncle's upside-down, buried in the sand!

Why he's always doing it, you just don't understand!

To us it's not unusual,  for we're a funny bunch!

Run, run, run, run! He might lose his lunch!

228.From a Birthday Book.

These verses are based on an entry in a very old Birthday Book of mine. Presumably they apply to 1/365th of the human race, so I publish them for my daughter Rebecca and for all others born on her birthday.

This is a favourite photograph of mine.

FROM A BIRTHDAY BOOK!

'Moral courage is the hallmark of those born on this date.

Such people cope with steadfastness should setbacks be their fate.

They have tremendous patience in the face of adversity

They hang-on with determination saying 'What will be, will be'.'

Well, here's hoping not too many troubles ever come your way!

Here's wishing you the world on this your very special day.