Sat in the doctor's office for an hour this evening as I needed to see him on another matter, and threw in the man flu for good measure. He also took my blood pressure which read high. This mainly due to my white coat syndrome and sitting about feeling anxious. Also weighed me and I am heavy... So that last six months of constant exercise has done the trick then. Waves of futility. Left the doctor feeling like I wasn't long for this world and significantly less healthy than when I went in.

Fortunately spoke to Sarah this evening who laughed at me and reminded me that I was chosing to interpret it as doomy.

Read some poems from the selected poems of Sophie Hannah. They seem quite nicely done, and a very confident style using a variety of forms. I also read most of The Huntress by Pascale Petit. Very different kettle of fish here but I liked it a lot. Loads of Mexican imagery in the poems (which I like having spent a few weeks there). The poems seem to be about a daughter being haunted by her mentally ill mother. Here is a short one, which doesn't use Mexican imagery.

The Spell

After Maman's first brainwashing session
I impaled a toad

on a thorn bush over an anthill
and watched the ants flense its flesh

until its croaks grew faint.
Then I threw the bones into the stream.

Only the key-bone floated against the current
back towards me

in a silence so deep I could hear it scream.
When that bone moored in my hand,

I repeated everything Maman had said
backwards.

Pascale Petit

A couple of years ago Pascale Petit accepted a couple of my poems for Poetry London, and suggested an excellent change to one of them too.

My flowers are thriving thanks to recent rain. Here is a picture of them and my front door and the end of the Twitten (as you can see the Twitten is not a stretch of Australian Bush).