Carl

Why do I keep spelling Carl's name with a "K"? I guess because I'm thinking Marx not Perkins.

But Carl with a "C" is right.

This is his last day with us for three weeks. He has another better-paying job to go to. Then he'll come back. He's so happy we're letting him go that he's said he'll tile our kitchen for free.

But he's a mate . He's got a living to earn. Besides, it's nice for us to have a holiday from all the dust and noise.

He's working on the banisters right now with a dinky little sander he bought on sale at B & Q.  It looks like a domestic iron and gets into all the nooks and crannies.   

He's so thorough. Our next door neighbour asked us in to carry something out to the car for her this morning and Carl was muttering afterwards about  the work she's just had done; "They haven't sanded before they painted; they haven't laid that floor right."

And he charges for the job, not for the time it takes. How good is that?

Anniversary

It's too early.

9/11 was an incident in a story that hasn't ended yet. 

I have opinions, but today doesn't seem the right time to air them.

Here's the poem I wrote at the time

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

Peace is the biggest and best. She’s blonde
And stripped to her wide, white hips. Athena
Strong-arms Mars from the scene. We don’t need him
Here where Peace is jetting the milk
At her hungry kiddie (that’s us). A panther
Rolls at her feet with its paws in the air.

That’s how Rubens imagined her
In some gap, I suppose, of the idiot war,
Generations long, that screwed with his Europe
Of Protestant and Catholic.
But in my dream she was wearing a dress
Of soft, plush velvet the colour of dust
That the rain has settled. Her hair was abundant
And red like fawnskin..

All night I sought her,
Searching through halls with classrooms off them,
Libraries with books stacked high,
And cafeterias where boys and girls
Drank coffee and conversed as friends.
She had called me sweetheart and held my head
To her chest. I was desperate. I couldn’t find her.