Room Service, by Peter Morford

It was still dark when I woke up and tried to move my legs. My knees hurt but my legs were numb. I knew I was moving my toes but I felt nothing. Remembering what my doctor had said, I rather guiltily uncrossed my ankles without feeling a thing. When I tried to sit up I saw, rather than felt, that her beautiful strong legs were holding me down.
I needed a paracetamol. Carefully, so as not to disturb her, I wriggled and slithered out of bed and limped into the bathroom for the pills. Fully awake now I made coffee and went to sit on the balcony.

In the still air the only sound was the sea lapping the beach 30 metres below me. It was a moonless astronomers’ night. It was nearly 4 o’clock and I could see the first glimmer of the sunrise. The pain was less now as the circulation returned to my legs. It wasn’t deep vein thrombosis after all. I carefully went back to bed and adjusted myself around her.

I lay there thinking about our holiday. After our long flights we had spent Sunday just relaxing on the beach, swimming, sun-bathing and talking. On Monday we’d exploredthe Old Town where we sheltered from the sun in the museum and the art gallery and took a tour round the Castle and Cathedral. That evening we went to a concert. We rented a car for a few days and just drifted around, stopping at places whichlooked interesting. We could be energetic or lazy, people-watching from a pavement café; arguing about the things which interested us; or just reading in comfortable silence. We were,I thought, as compatible as anyone could expect or hope to be.

I must have dozed, for when I woke the sun was well up and I could feel the heat through the open doors. She was already up, presumably in the shower. I noticed how quiet the room was and realised that she wasn’t singing this morning.

I went into the bathroom. She wasn’t there. All her make-up and toiletries were gone. I checked her wardrobe. Empty. Cases gone. But for the state of the bed and a trace of her favourite perfume there was no sign that she had been here at all. There was no message. She had just vanished.

You may imagine how I felt. I called Room Service and asked for Luis, the Night Manager. “Ah good morning Senor Byron. I have a message for you. The courtesy car delivered the young lady at the
airport and she took the 8 o’clock west-bound flight.”
“Thanks, Luis. I’ll check out after breakfast so have my bill ready. Then I want you to give me a different room on Floor 10, facing the sea.”
He said, “I understand Senor. Will you excuse me for a moment – my other phone is ringing.”

After a few seconds he was back again. “Senor – I’ve just heard from my driver at the Airport. He tells me your wife’s plane has been delayed by an hour and will land at 10 o’clock. She should be here by noon.”
“In that case Luis, make sure that you put a bottle of champagne and flowers in our new room for her arrival.”
   I could hear his chuckle. “The usual procedure, Senor?”

Not for the first time I praised the hotel for its friendly service.

Into the Wilderness: a dream; by Peter Shilston

It was a bright sunny afternoon. Gerry was sitting quietly in the park when a young man, a complete stranger, walked up to him.
   "Are you ready to come with us?" he asked.
   "I'm waiting for my girlfriend", said Gerry.
   "She's with us. You'll meet her if you come with us. Are you ready?"
   "All right", said Gerry, at a loss for anything else to say.
   Immediately, everything went black. He felt that he had left the ground and was being sucked through a tight tube. When he opened his eyes, he was still in a park, but a different one, with trees and flowers that he could not recognise or name. A group of people stood around him. Their skins were somewhat darker than his, and they were dressed in white tunics.
   "Is this him?" one of them asked.
   "Yes: I chose him". Gerry recognised Anna, his girlfriend.
   "Will he do?"
   "He'll have to!"
   Gerry looked around. Behind him, where in his town there had been a railway station, there loomed an enormous building. It reminded Gerry of a French chateau, though it was built in an architectural style unknown to him.
   "Are we going there?" he asked.
   "Not yet. First you must enter the wilderness".
   Gerry wondered what could have happened. Was this time travel, a dimension-shift or a parallel universe? Or was it all just a dream? At any event, there seemed little option but to go along with what was required of him.  

A Counterblast to Lord Rochester, by Freda Cook

A Pox on Rochester, the Bore! 

All that one does is stuff in more

purple words relentlessly.

He’s hounded by Necessity,

it seems. Kindlier Nature culled,

he plies his vigorous Pen; is pulled

to slap his parts on the Page so fast

you’d think his Time and not his Whore

had come - if she did. I’d cast

some doubt on that; our Peer is more

concerned with loucher takes on Lust.

Ah well, it happens when Love’s gone bust.

Admire the Poet? His work is slick,

but, basically, the man’s a Prick.

Metamorphosis, by Patty Lafferty

Butterfly:
strange, and it might be true
as you fly over
rosemary, and forget-me-not blue
that you vaguely recall
your grub-life grief
laboriously
crawling on a dangerous leaf?

Do you remember, then 
freedom from the soil?
your joyful flight from the
wearisome toil?
Then from chrysalis limbo
cocooned against strife
do you know you've transmuted to
etherial life?

Maybe like you I 
will one day have wings
and shed my old body and its
arrows and slings.
Will I
rise up anew; fly 
higher than the sky?
Where gravity is no more;
and know the answer to: why?


(Patty Lafferty died yesterday at the age of 87, having been disabled for many years. This poem is one of the last she wrote, and reflects her increasing disability. I publish it in her memory) 

Two Coffees, by Sandie Zand

Way back, when it mattered, I'd said: "There's only one rule and that is there are no rules."

You laughed. “You can’t do that,” you said. “Can’t say there aren’t rules and make that a rule – it’s a contradiction.”

“Okay,” I said. “Call it a guideline then. No rules, that’s the guideline. Agreed?”

“Yeah, cool,” you said. You laughed again, you sounded full, and I knew I had you.

You were making coffee. Instant. You didn’t drink the proper stuff back then. Even with coffee, you wouldn’t follow the rules; you’d pour hot water into the cups then sprinkle granules on the surface where they’d float in belligerent denial of purpose. You had to stir it for ages before they dissolved.

Now you’re making coffee again, in the espresso maker we bought last June, and you hand me mine – black, just as it comes. Into yours, you shake sugar from the bag, not caring whether you get one measure or five, and you stir the sticky brew with an egg spoon for ages.

“I was wondering,” you say, “what the guideline would be for seeing other people.”

The coffee burns my top lip, hits the roof of my mouth and burns that too. I swear, jerk the cup away, hot liquid curls over the edge and spills onto my shirt.

“I mean theoretically,” you say, “you know.”

“Why ask me?” I dab at the spill with a tea-towel, but it’s seeped right through and is clinging fast. I go to the sink, dampen a cloth and press the stain gently, glad to have my back to you. I wait for you to speak.

“Well, as guardian of guidelines,” you say. “I mean they are always yours, right? So I thought, well, you might have... you know... one in reserve…”

You move forward and peer over my shoulder.

“Rub soap on it,” you suggest.

“It’s silk,” I say, “dry-clean only.”

“They always put that, just covering their backs, it needs soap.”

You do the laundry with the same reckless will with which you sweeten your coffee. I had to make it a guideline in the end – after the first couple of months of sludge-grey whites – that we each take care of our own clothes.

“So…” You drain your cup in one mouthful, swallow it down on the pause. “What say you?”

“I suppose it’s a case of to thine own self be true,” I say.

“That’s the guideline?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Okay,” you say. “Cool. It was just theoretical, just curiosity, you know.”

You put down your empty cup.

I stand by the sink, a circle of damp encroaching on my chest.

And I wait for you to leave.

Battersea Fields, by Freda Cook

Do not forget me, Battersea fields,
in the park where grass
was ankle high and seed heads
crushed in the hand
sweetened the morning air
heavy with fat smells
from candle works,
where each green blade
seemed softer under fingers
than fine lawns did years on
at the north end of the staling city.

Do not forget me, Battersea streets,
whose gutters were cobbled,
grouted with gravel, dust
where summer-sole shoes
curved over their hunch, bent
unsteady ankles as mud
from the ‘mere slipped underfoot
and matchbox boats in rain
swirled slowly by sweet wrappers
down drains through whose wide grids
slopped childhood lives.

So, I can turn to the place
where, if I am not wiser now,
I still feel strong,
the last of your grass in my hands,
your cobbles under my feet.

Mist, by Peter Morford

If you can reasonably see the view for half a mile – that’s mist. If you can’t see that far, it’s fog. If you’re choking, it’s smog. If you’re wearing a face mask, it’s Tokyo, Beijing, Los Angeles or London’s South Circular Road.
It’s all very well for Keats to praise the mists of autumn. Wordsworth loitering on misty Westminster Bridge at dead of night could be lonely as a cloud while the city slept. But I’m pretty sure that neither of them was ever stuck on the M1 for three hours while the police cleared up the wreckage. Half a mile visibility is all right if you’re walking a docile horse but at 60 you never see the road signs in time. As any HGV or white-van driver will tell you, fog and mist are bad news if you have a schedule to follow.
Fog was Dickens’ inspiration and he dreamt up ever more nasty deeds for his inventions.

Sorry.
I’ve just realised I’ve already broken my NY resolution circa 2001. Look on the bright side, I told myself, see the good things amid the aggravations of life.

Start again.
Mists and mellow fruitfulness. How true. Use a little imagination. It’s a few minutes before sunrise. The tide is creeping into the estuary. By hazy light you can just see the small boats leaning over in the mud and, beyond them, the outline of a fishing boat, shored up by timbers because a hermit lives there. Look again and you’ll just see the dark shapes of other craft. It is quiet enough for you to hear the tiny sounds. A frog below your window, distant birdsong, the lapping of the gentle waves; the tick of the clock in your holiday rental. It’s already getting warmer and you know that soon the sun will burn off the mist and the old boathouse will be visible again. A van will be there and several men will emerge to unlock the great doors and begin another day’s work of hacking, bashing and burning a hulk into many tons of scrap metal.
If you head for the hills there are better mists to enjoy. It’s just hazy enough on the track to dampen your coat and smear your glasses. It’s not cold on this October day and you know that in perhaps half an hour it will clear and you will reach the top and enjoy the view as you eat your picnic.
In the valley, hundreds of feet below, there is a blur of trapped mist. We cannot see the village in its wrapping. The people down there cannot see us. It gives all of us a sense of being in a special place as we start the descent.