So tomorrow I have another job interview. Another chance for something better in my life but another chance to highlight that things have stalled a little in my development. It’s not been a great start to the week in terms of my self-evaluation. Having said that, we launched a new issue of Bunbury Magazine and I am still doing my blog so thing could be worse. I have played, I think, a little too much FIFA 15 so far this week. It is a little addicted.

I always find it odd that I write poetry and like football. The Ven diagram cannot have a huge intersection where those two things overlap. I often wonder if there is something at odds inside me – well, I know there is and I have spent quite a lot of time trying to reconcile the two parts of me. I wonder which of those two sides – the poet and the football fan – is the better side of me. Maybe they are roughly the same in terms of equality and goodness. I mean, I am not one of those football fans that goes to football matches and cause trouble just for the hell of it and is a racist. Well, I have a natural distrust of all Scousers but I think that is just human nature! I’m kidding.

I’m not kidding.

So tonight saw another meeting of our group Do The Write Thing. Each week every person choose a word or a prompt or a theme to base writing around, to get the juices flowing. Last week’s words for this week were ‘Eiderdown’ (See my post 13/01/15), ‘Idolatry’ (14/01/15), ‘Aquarium’, ‘Revulsion’ and to write a poetic to a spam email. These last ones I did nothing with as I got distracted by things. Things in my brain. My brain, dammit!

I may draw a Ven diagram soon of the interests I have that do not seem to reconcile with each other. I like Sci-Fi, football, poetry. Three things. I apparently only like three things.

So my job interview tomorrow. I am feeling hopeful of getting it. It’s only shop work but the interview gives me a chance to wear my suit. I like wearing my suit. I may dig out and iron the shirt I have for which I need cuff-links. Keri bought me a tweed wallet and matching tweed cuff-links for Christmas. I like tweed.

So when I play FIFA, I get a bit sweary when I am losing. I was having a good swear when my opponent scored today and, not on a personal level, threw a few insults his way. I did not realise that, because of the Kinect sensor, my opponent could hear me. Bit of a faux pas, to be honest. He got his microphone on and, understandably, had a bit of a go back at me. I apologised, explained that I’m a wee bit mad and we ended up having quite a nice chat while he thrashed me. He added me onto his friends list and we are playing again at some point. His screen name is Naked Pope, which raises a whole bunch of questions I don’t know if I want the answer to.

The writing group was a nice turn out tonight. My mother is a part of the group. she wrote a really cute poem about a spam email that had very dark undertones. She used heroic couplets. I am not really one to use rhyme in poetry as I find it a bit clunky. Really bad poetry rhymes, and the poet forces the rhyme by convoluting word order into something unnatural. This is how my poetry turns out when I try to rhyme but my mother is really, enviably, impressive. You can really see she has put so much effort in. I think she puts more effort into one poem than I have into the twenty-one I have written for this blog so far. Twenty-one poems. 605 lines of poetry. I am currently 5.75% into the challenge and I think I can feel myself start to flag already. It’s going to be a long ol’ year.

I did want to say something tonight about the ‘#meninism’ that has sprung up on social media but, with one thing and another, it has gotten a little late. Tomorrow I shall be coming out about it in full force. Tonight’s blog has been a little all over the place. My thoughts are a little disordered at the moment.

I am kidding, by the way. Here is a poem. The prompt for tonight’s is the word ‘Secret’, suggested by a member of Do The Write Thing.

She thinks I cannot see her

on the other side of the room,

pyjamas creaking against leather as

she fidgets in her seat.

I watch over the top of my glasses

as her shoulder works overtime,

her hand tucked down

between her hip and the arm of the sofa.

I smile to myself. She looks

over at me and I pretend to

busy myself on my laptop.

At the top of my vision,

her hand slowly

moves up from its hiding place

and inches

slowly

towards her

face. Her mouth opens, and,

in the same instant I blink,

her hand is back in her lap

and she smiles at me again,

a small smudge of chocolate

on the corner of her mouth.

She’ll say it’s nothing through

her secretive chews.

I smile to myself again

as I fidget down the side

of my chair and tear off

a small chunk of steak.

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