Thursday 10 June 2010

So as it transpires early evening isn't a good time to visit the swimming pool.  It's just about the time when the middle-aged biddys are finishing work and thinking "A refreshing swim, that's exactly what I need right now."  A refreshing swim, and a natter to your equally greying, equally cringeworthy peers whilst standing naked in a public shower.  If when I am about 50 years old or so I reach a point where the highlights of my social life involve standing obstructing passage to the changing rooms wearing no knickers and wittering on and on in a carrying voice about my teapot collection then I hope somebody will remind me to shoot myself.  HONESTLY the sheer pretentiousness of their conversations drive me to distraction as well.  For the last time nobody cares how much your teapots cost or what lengths you went to to purchase them abroad and it's the mark of an idle and disappointed life that you even have time to spare to think of such things.  (OK I have time to spare - or not (!) to write lengthy blogs on the internet that probably no-one will ever read, but that's different. It's just like keeping a diary for posterity except online, right?!)  If it was just these women's conversations that were the problem it wouldn't be intolerable, but the worst of it is the way they gratuitously parade themselves around naked! It's almost as though they take a vicarious pleasure in exposing themselves in front of people half their age and more often than not half their weight that have no wish on earth to see... 

When one woman stood for several minutes applying eyeliner whilst butt naked with her back turned to the room so we could all see her ass in such detail as would imprint itself in your memory in spite of your best efforts to forget, it got to the point where I was thinking for crying out loud, what exactly have you got against clothes.  It seems to me almost as though in flashing their unkempt nether-regions and the wrinkled folds of their breasts they're saying, pah look at you young and happy and beautiful; one day you're going to end up looking like me.  All very well, but I hope when Godwilling I am 30 years older and beginning to lose the battle against gravity I won't so utterly abandon all my sense of dignity!   

There really is very little in the world that I dislike more than a busy swimming pool.  The number of people in there churning it up makes it more like a really shallow chemical-filled sea than an indoor leisure pool, it's that choppy.  And then there are the old women (and men too in this instance I would hasten to add) who are quite happy going up and down in their stately breast stroke and blissfully unaware of the fact that they are taking up an entire lane by themselves and that they just kicked you in the face.  Worst of all is when they try to overtake you.  No love, don't flatter yourself, you're not faster than me. Although you might be just barely keeping up your veneer of stateliness for now, we all know that before you reach the shallow end you'll be gasping like this is the final push for the summit of Everest.  Anyway... 

it hasn't been at all a good past couple of days in general.  Yesterday I got the following letter in my pidge: 

Dear Ms Stewart 

Lord Alfred Douglas Memorial Prize 2010

I regret to inform you that your entry has been unsuccessful.  There were a large number of entries this year, and the overall standard was high.  The judges would like to thank all of those who entered; the name of the winner will be published in the next available edition of the University Gazette.  

So of course when I pulled the letter out the envelope and saw the heading my heart leapt; I'd been waiting for this bit of post impatiently and why would they bother writing to me if not to say that I'd won??  You regret....pah I bet you don't really.  Unsuccessful?? watch who you're calling unsuccessful. Does the fact that I wrote a sonnet that wasn't good enough for your stupid prize make it an 'unsuccessful entry'?  I thought it was pretty darned good to be honest otherwise I wouldn't have entered it - and since when have I been a 'Ms'?  To be fair they couldn't have told whether I was married or not from the information I gave them: my first and christian name concealed under a motto.  Only Oxford would devise such a pretentious way of entering a competition.  Obviously I was gutted not to have won; not only because of the prestige but because of the fact that I'm in such a dire financial situation that when I'm at uni I don't even always know where my next meal will be coming from.  £880 would have gone a long way: I don't have extravagant habits or anything; certainly I don't go on shopping sprees and come back with Gucci clothes and 30 new pairs of shoes.  The only slightly expensive thing I ever do is scuba dive, but really if I didn't have a bit of adventure in my life I think I would go mad.  That and the fact that it was a bloody good sonnet. I don't think it's entirely vanity in me to think that it's a lot better than other compositions that have won prizes in the past. I'm determined to get my name out there as a writer somehow or other, but it requires a thick skin. I know people my age who are already appearing at stuff as guest speakers alongside the likes of Ruth Padel and Carol Ann Duffy, which is just sickening.  The closest I've ever come to recognition was getting shortlisted in the Anne Pierson Award for young writers in Cumbria.  In Cumbria!! I ask you. There's probably only one school in the entire county that teaches people enough to afford them a fighting chance of knowing enough to write a credible competition entry.  I think 20 out of about 100 entries end up on the shortlist.  OK my style then was immature and dense to the point of clotting with three-syllable words but this sonnet I was genuinely proud of:  


TERMINUS

When he comes, all give him belated welcome
As to darkling door he raises his fist.
To him in time all nature soon succumbs 
Ere then in low skulking he persists.
He is a lover of calm and of peace;
On weary and weakling he smiles benign, 
Softly he waits for the bright lamp's decease
Vapour and shade are his only signs.
On caskets, like cradles, his head he rests:
Before him I dwindle yet still I adore.
By those who lock swords is he meet to be blest, 
He whose countenance no man ever saw. 
In morbid splendour perpetual he presides - 
So close to out hearts does King Death reside. 


I think 'Terminus' is also a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson but I wasn't to know that when I wrote it.  I've rarely managed to get the petrachan metre so spot-on and I'm very pleased with the way each line flows into the next.  True there might not be much place in contemporary culture for such an old-fashioned overtly religious Donne-esque piece but I was still offended by the rejection.  Maybe all the recognition I will ever get is the odd person stumbling across my blog by a chance combination of words they happened to google! *sigh*  

 


1 comment:

  1. Formidable!

    A fantastic modern, yet traditional piece of sonnet writing.

    good work

    ReplyDelete