I Heart My Dressing Gown

Most mornings if there's nothing special going on I sit at the computer in my dressing gown for several hours and slowly turn to ice. For reasons too technical and boring to be worth recounting the computer lives by an open door leading into the hallway and there's a draught.

Why don't I get dressed before I come downstairs? I don't know. It's either because I'm a creature of habit or because I'm too darn lazy.

Next door's burglar alarm went off at one o'clock last night so I put on my dressing gown ( a theme emerges) and went and looked at her house front and back. Oh, and I took a walking stick for protection. Nobody seemed to be breaking in so I went back to bed and the alarm cut out after about ten minutes. 

If my brain is working slowly this morning, that's why.

By the way, my dressing gowns (I have two to choose from) are ratty and made of towelling so any resemblance between me and Noel Coward is purely notional. Besides I don't wear a cravat.

By Way Of Explanation

I have a lot of poems lying around- mostly dating from the 1990s. Poetry was what I did before I discovered LJ. 

I published quite a few in poetry magazines, but- really- that's more or less the same as putting them straight in the waste-bin, isn't it?

My experience of the poetry world- even at a low level- is that it's all about schmoozing and log-rolling and back-biting and ass-licking and really the thought of getting involved in all that makes me sick.

The world is full of poets. There are thousands, millions, cawing and clawing for attention.  At any given time only one or two of them will be any good. 

I used to "work" as a poetry reviewer. It got to be soul-destroying. So much utter cack.

But as Orson Welles said, "no professional artist sets out to do bad work"- so it behooves one to be kind.

I don't know if my poems are any good- the odds are very much against it- but I'm fond of them.

Which is why I drop one into the discourse every now and then.