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A NOT ABOUT A GIRAFFE POEM Reginald Aldridge Fenwick-Forbes Though everyone called him Raff Had great big eyes and long curly tongue And a face that could make you laugh With his long cerlickety clackety legs And his wobbly knobbly knees He would gallop about  With his tongue hanging out Quite as odd as you please  He never got called indoors you see As many of us would do For his mother believed it was good to be free Far better than being in the zoo Where some of his friends were glued to their phones Oblivious to life around Where old giraffes with crochety bones Turned down their hearing aids’ sound Raff was enjoying the great outdoors Dangeroos as it could be Tripping on roots And stretching for shoots  At the top of the tallest tree His mother would say “Reginald Forbes!” (In that “Mother-knows-best kind of tone!) “You don’t have to do what the other kids do It’s ok to be alone” So Raff didn’t do...

Footprints of Hope The well worn little essay about which authorship is often disputed concerning the two sets of footprints in the sand has been published many times and has perhaps become a kind of coffee mug philosophy the unpacking of which I will spare my patient readers, tempting as it would be, as many eminently more qualified bloggers, writers and teachers have no doubt already done before me.  The term, footprint in business can mean almost anything from a company’s geographic market presence normally referring to the space taken up by a building, to the carbon footprint or the environmental effect certain activities have on the earth’s natural resources.  Footprints can signify divine presence, or omnipresence in Eastern philosophies such as Hinduism or Buddhism, a subject about which I do not claim to have much, if any knowledge. So a footprint can mean, according to Collins Dictionary anything from the indentation or outline of a person or animal t...

The Apple Cart  We were the offspring of the Volksie generation The Nestum cherubs of the Baby Boom Nylon, terelyne, lurex and spandex  All mixed in with a trip to the moon In our DNA the early rumblings  Of human division we did not understand But soon we learnt the language of survival Was written in the palms Of our sticky little hands So off we marched with our Crayola rifles While Dorothy Fisher got a brand new heart We coloured in pictures of the man on the moon And took a Giant Leap onto the apple cart Great big apples. Fresh and juicy More than enough for and more to spare We ate and ate until our bellies ached And still there were apples enough to share Which was quite fun until somebody said: “Hey! These rules aren’t right. Something’s wrong” So, some of the kids were allowed up on the cart While some other kids had to trundle along Behind the apple cart picking up the apple cores Thrown down by the kids...

WE WILL FORGET We will forget Because we are wired to default to forget mode At the going down of the sun and in the morning We put it all behind us The pain, if it’s ours, will be buried Day by day we will salve it with whatever balm we can Because to remember is too painful For those who can’t forget there is only darkness Hope fades as the pain swallows them up Those who do not survive, fall with their faces to the foe Those who do are never again true of eye, neither steady nor aglow We will forget Because, while men are consumed with greed and prejudice and hatred We will forget The sunken cheeks, the naked bodies stripped of dignity As long as it isn’t us We will forget We will move on as quickly as we can to the next thing So that we WILL forget We will forget the images of War Famine Disease Drought Corruption Genocide Because as long as it doesn’t touch us, we will forget No matter how many red poppies grow in Flanders f...

Play Date "Come and be 7 with me today,"  "I'm on my way" she said. So we drove to the waterslide near the beach and parked our cars side by side. We squealed as we changed into our bathing costumes underneath our towels, and ran to the ticket office clutching our entry fees in our sweaty hands, our towels around our necks.  Nothing else.  No handbags No phones No change of clothes  We told the lady at the ticket office we were there without our parents the ramifications of which she clearly didn't fully grasp or she would not have allowed us entry. Where the signs said, "no running" we ran, well, we kind of did a fast waddle, in a fiftysomethingkindofway. The same way middle aged non runners "waddle" along sidewalks in the slipstream of their younger selves in lycra leggings and support bras. We waddled with our arms across our breasts up the steps, as fast as our pre-knee replacement limbs would allow. Our kne...

One Day Sometimes we allow life to pass us by and everything is deferred to that magical  "One day when …" One day when I meet that Mr Right One day when my babies are out of nappies One day when I have that degree, that job, that house One day When the earth is ploughed and turned, The seed is sown, The harvest stored When rest is earned We’ll make love in the gloaming And lie for hours in the afterglow The way we did not long ago … And watch the sun’s slow silkiness steal across slumbering mountains We will not slumber. We’ll rise to catch the morning sounds of weavers in the undergrowth And smell the dew upon the ground And maybe we will take to watching birds with those binoculars that decorate our wall or reading Or sail across the bay to see the sharks’ frenzied feeding Or take a slow boat up the coast In and out and in and out That Would Be The Most wonderful...

Ok, This is my first blog and with so much to write, my fingers are practically paralysed mid-air. Hovering pointlessly above asdf and jkl; Essentially, I need to go on this journey. I need to write every day. I need to see if I have what it takes. That audience of one: that most critical of all critics; that shouty adult voice of reason that booms "this will flop cataclysmically" is all but drowning out the other little voice, the one attached to little pokey fingers that prods things just to see what they do. I will listen to that voice … I remember visiting my granny in a little town called Douglas in the Northern Cape, when I was about 5 years old and came in to her study one day while she was doing what we would now call admin. I guess in those days, she was paying bills and writing a few letters at her old roll-top  writing desk on the little portable Olivetti typewriter. Sitting upright as always, immaculately dressed with her grey hair neatly pinned back in a bu...