Autumn Days

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 22 September 2005 11:27:35

A beautiful morning today. I walked through the parks of South London to work, picking up conkers and sycamore wings. Conkers are so pointlessly beautiful - there's nothing you can do with them unless you're a violent small boy or you want to stick pins in them to make little animals. But I discovered they bounce quite well and have been throwing them around all morning. I've one on my desk as I type. No wonder my colleagues think I'm bonkers.

We're writing a speech for the wedding I'm bridesmaid at next week. I've picked this wonderful poem by Fanthorpe which sums up marriage for me... Maybe that's just because I'm very banal, but I think it's gorgeous. It's called Atlas

There is a kind of love called maintenance.
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;
Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget the milkman, which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters, which knows the way the money goes, which deals with dentists
And road fund tax and meeting trains, and postcards to the lonely
Which upholds the permanently rickety elaborate structures of living; which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing to my brickwork;
Insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dry rotten jokes,
Remembers my need for gloss and grouting;
Which keeps my suspect edifice upright in the air,
As atlas did the sky.