Before coffee thoughts
and after coffee thoughts
can differ somewhat.
It’s a thing.
Some people say that coffee has no effect on them whatsoever;
but, coffee seems to have an effect upon me,
and I can have an effect upon people –
not necessarily a positive one –
and so, indirectly, coffee
can effect everyone.
Two large mugs of coffee to the good,
and I have written this
(amongst other things) –
cheers!
Made from life events
and numerous poems read,
alloyed with quirky.
Not every hippy’s dippy,
slippy, or grammatically quippy.
Remember, in the Summer of Love
they were flowers in the air.
I wasn’t in San Francisco,
I was too young to be there,
But, when those pretty young things
started to feel their age,
they were still the stars of that far away stage.
I had tried six impossible things;
six implausible things;
and, finally,
six impassable things.
All before breakfast.
Which, by the time I got to the breakfast table,
was either: cold, stale, inedible, or missing.
My plate was the picture of an artist –
probably an abstract one,
as it wasn’t recognisably
a breakfast that anyone would want to eat.
Consequently, I didn’t eat it.
Black coffee, lukewarm,
and the memory of a far off petit dejeuner,
would have to get me through to lunch.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged #poetry. #poem, six, #breakfast, #Alice, #Things, prose, #HitchHikersGuide, #PetitDejeuner
ANCIENT MONUMENT
They’re building an ancient monument
On the site of my BurgerMac
And when they’ve knocked my drive-thru down
We’ll never get it back.
Let’s start up a petition
With Disney as our theme
We must save our heritage
We mustn’t lose our dream.
Let’s wear our paper crown
As a symbol of our hope
And praise the scary-looking clown;
More popular than the Pope.
We’ll hold up our freebies happily
And worship to the skies
For we ‘must‘ keep the natural order
Of Burger, Shake, and Fries.
See here for Linda G Hill’s prompts and siteL
After checking back with W (at control) I was advised to ask a policeman for directions.
Upon eventually my finding a PC, strolling around inside PC World, and asking him whether I should go ‘West or East?’ I was advised that ‘West is best’ – he happened to be one of the rare ‘rhyming’ policemen of little or no value to society, apart from in a strangely poetic way.
I duly travelled due East, and landed safely in the hitherto unknown Gillingham Airport in Kent (which is close to the Isle of Thanet) at approximately a quarter to.
The secret contact was found casually leaning against the third coffee vending machine on the right (as I had almost been advised that he would be), having kept himself awake and primed for inaction by the consumption of thirty-seven cups of steaming Nitrous Coffee –
‘Guaranteed to stimulate the mind if not the body!’
I handed the contact the tape and he briefly checked it through for authenticity. Finding it to be the genuine article, the contact gave me a recipe for his Grandma’s Treacle Tart Pudding, and a copy of ‘The Tatler and the Bystander’ from 1941.
Finishing the crossword in that magazine made me realise something: that I was terrible at crosswords… and that perhaps I should have spent the intervening 17 days actually earning the pay of a spy.
Needless to say, I was demoted to Dispatch Rider (second class) and given the choice of a donkey or Shank’s Pony as my chariot of choice. Being no fool, I chose the pony.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged #LindaGHill, #poetry. #poem, #soc, #SoCS, #streamofconsciousness, #Tape
Take our advice
and don’t think twice
(when once is enough);
because I think
that if you think
therefore I jam.
Spread a little joy,
upon your scone,
jam first, then the cream,
or the Cornish folk
at you will scream.
Lostwithiel should be Foundwithiel;
do you see?
The story is:
We put up posters here
We put up posters there
“Has anybody seen our Lostwithiel?
Is that it over there? No.”
We did the rounds.
Upon the grounds
that as it was quite big finding it should be easy
like the finding of a twig in a forest – oh! That’s not good,
it’s like trying to find a specific tree within an unknown wood.
But, to cut a long story short,
as a practical poet really ought:
Lostwithiel was where it should have been all along,
the direction that we had been looking in,
that was what was wrong.
“We found Lostwithiel,
Lostwithiel was found!
Foundwithiel!”
SoCS – Tape – #4 – Linda G Hill – a timed 5-minute SoC write
Linda G Hill’s site can be found here.
I had to get the tape to the contact. The contact that hadn’t turned up at the Railway Station, or the Opera, or the Coffee Bar in Kensington.
I hadn’t expected the contact to turn up in those places as they were not the places that the coded messages had suggested; but, as I was on expenses…
It was at the next contact point that the contact should appear – in an old, red, telephone kiosk off of the old, brown, Brompton High St.
I checked my map – no such place existed, even though I was sure that I had decoded the coded message correctly this time.
Brompton?
I checked again.
Aaargh! It was the High Street, Brompton, in Gillingham.
Now, was that in North Devon or Kent?
Posted in Poetry
Saturday SoC Sequence #1-#3 a timed 5 minutes on each piece
https://lindaghill.com/2023/03/17/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-march-18-2023/
Prompt: Tape
#1
Pencils were always handy for me when I used to have cassette players in the car and at home. The tape deciding to leave home and get into a tangle was a semi-regular occurrence. If the tape was retrievable – hadn’t stretched or snapped – then a pencil (or even a Biro) coiled be used to return the tape from whence it came. I did, on occasion, splice some snapped tapes together again, but results were varying from poor to playing.
Cassettes were fantastic in the car, and, being too young for eight-track, I went mainly for the C90 tapes that would host an LP on either side. C120 tapes were too long, and so I avoided them; C60 taped held an album over two sides and room for some repeated tracks, or extra tunes to be added. C30, C60, and C90 are Cassette tapes to those minutes over two sides.
#2
Gaffa Tape is the most useful thing on the planet. Discuss. Form an argument as to why this is, or isn’t, so.; write a dissertation upon Gaffa Tape, buy more for when you next need lots.
Actually, Air is probably more of a necessity, or Water, possibly many things are needed before Gaffa Tape hits the list; but, when it comes to tapes… it’s going to be up there at the top – unless you are a big fan of Celotape. I wish they could invent a tape where the cut end doesn’t disappear without a trace and you spend minutes of your life (non-returnable) trying to get another piece from the reel. Life is not long enough to have to deal with this sort of thing.
Gaffa Tape has many, many uses which I shall not list here for fear of being asked how I know them all.
#3
My measuring tape, or tape measure, is 5 metres long when unwound. And yet it is only 2.5 inches long and tall when in its little container. Why I should utilise Imperial and Metric measurements I do bot know, but measure for measure I do.
There, a bit of Shakespeare in the night for you to enjoy, or ignore, in equal measure as you like – it bothers me not.
So, if I need to measure something 5 metres long, it is the ideal length of tape measure with which to do so. If longer, I will have to adapt my methods and improvise a standup routine to accomplish the feat.
Or buy a longer tape measure – but that will inevitably incur a cost, and I might only use the second tape measure the once.
 | Cynthia Praski on SoCS – Tape – #4… |
 | Words from a Lentil… on SoCS – Tape – #4… |
| Cynthia Praski on SoCS – Tape – #4… |
| Words from a Lentil… on SoCS – Tape – #4… |
| Cynthia Praski on SoCS – Tape – #4… |
Graeme Sandford 