A Game of Baws

Don’t re-blog much cos my computer’s even slower than my brain. This one’s very much worth reading though….

Bonnie Fairbrass

In the recent game of Baws, known to some as the election, the results are as follows:
Scotland One – England Nil
I hate to tell you England, but you’ve been done.
I am in a bit of an awkward position, as an English woman, living in Scotland, who voted SNP.
According to the press I’ve just fucked over everyone I know in England. To some I guess that makes me a traitor. That, I believe is a matter of perspective. I’d like to think that most of my friends down south would not be so judgemental, and perhaps better read than the majority, or at least be able to count and stuff. I am not a one off either, I happen to know a fair few other English people living here who voted SNP too. Oops. We bad.
I stand by my decision to vote SNP, as I do…

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Here be Lions

Friday morning, 8th May

Well well, and wasn’t that exciting? We ought to get some sleep, but it’s such a lovely day.

So why am I not pleased? Ah well, it’s good old Scotland syndrome again isn’t it. –

             Now all is done that men can do
             and all is done in vain.

At least any Labour supporters Britain-wide who have an elementary grasp of mathematics shouldn’t be able to accuse us of screwing them over. England did that all by herself.

What happened? Apparenly swathes of English voters threw themselves behind tha Conservatives in order (nobly) to SAVE THE UNION.
What I’m still asking is: what Union?

I really do think Scots should adopt this simple little meditation, every morning when they wake up. First, give thanks for life, health, relative freedom etc., and then remind themselves: There never was a Union. Just like that. There never was a Union. There was only ever Southern expansionism.

How do I know this? Well obviously: because the thought of a healthy, well-disposed and friendly neighbour on their northern border apparently fills the English with such terror that they’ll vote for a bunch of people they thoroughly dislike and a bunch of policies they hate rather than allow this to be. Clearly the only Scotland acceptable to them is a subject and subservient Scotland. It’s an atavism. Wake up, people of England! You can breathe freer when you’re not subject to night terrors. You can move more freely when you’re not burdened with thoughts of retaining Power at all costs.

I hope our bunch of guys who are going to Westminster keep their nerve; and remember they’re wandering into a lion’s den where supreme efforts will be made by Certain People to undermine and discredit them. Beware blandishments, honey-traps, excitable gossip…. – oh, and tell Alex to go easy on the roaring lions, there’s enough alarm as it is.

No poem this time. Too tired and emotional.

Not Yet Maytime

 
It was not blossom but snow that fell
just as the hawthorns were full of fresh lettuce
tender as the leaves on her plate, when we found her
relaxed and chatting in the salad bar
(“well why not”, she laughed, “a girl needs a bit
of me-time, doesn’t she”).

It was not blossom but snow that fell.
It was the loveliest thing, those forlorn flowers
the magenta, the yellow, wreathed in and out
by those unlikely other petals linked so thick
in one another, brooms and young larches were
bent to the ground.

“Unlikely? Incomprehensible!” we exclaimed.
But she, drawling “plenty of time yet!”
smiled in the well-heated bar. “You are the one”
we challenged, “we have that right, the keeper
of the four treasures, do you even have them?”
“There’s a key,” she said

As outside the snow kept falling,
formless now, “somewhere in my stuff – look
it’s here in my bag – or maybe not”
distractedly lighting a cigarette as she went on
hunting without success. “Oh really, it doesn’t
matter,” we assured her;

We went outside and left her to it
(it looked as though she’d never notice).
What now? What now? without those treasures
there could be no hope of a new beginning,
springtime would stop.

But the snow kept falling and somebody laughed;
“it was too mild a winter anyway”, he said;
“snow is a gift we need to be blessed with
at least once a year; without it
how can the water melt and run?
Come out, we’ll find

Those treasures, sure as eggs
hidden in a blackbird nest under a cap of snow.”
And so it was – not that there could be
a respite, not with his voice now fissuring the air
“you can’t rest on any success along the way
neither great nor small”.

It was not blossom but snow that fell.
And that is the story of the last spring
we ever spent together, just that core
of us, where our characters were formed;
there would be sometimes more and sometimes less
but never the round sum;

And the four treasures, those glittering entities
we were never quite convinced of
they lay in their hiding-place for years to come
perhaps hatching or just as likely stagnant
but that’s not the point: we learned that year
to take the blossom

As snow, the snow as blossom.