Rossignols are nightingales

SONNET
Damnit,
I
really
do
miss
ski-ing







It wasn’t all delight. At Crans I caught
A tip, tearing my shoulder at the ball,
Cracking the socket, facing a distraught
One-armed descent to the Swiss wailing wall.
The joint was luxé, squawked the harridan,
Who urged me to relax and not to scream
As others yanked on this prone Englishman
And others totalled up his bill supreme.
Yes, I was paying for those future days
Of hissing skis maintained in parallel,
Of turns that contoured all of heaven’s ways,
Of moguls charged, of schusses flown pell-mell.
That written self I often left behind
Is now in muck and bitterness confined

NOTE: The last line of this sonnet previously contained a mildly naughty word. Now I am professionally and viscerally opposed to censorship but some filtering sofware on the computer my younger daughter uses meant she was unable to open the post. On the grounds that there might be other nannying systems out there I changed the word and (the better the day the better the deed) made two or three other small changes. Since all the people who patronise Works Well are of superior intellect it won't need much elbow-nudging from me to hint at which word was changed and what it was changed from. Thus everyone whose mission is Truth Upon Earth may make the substitution in their mind and conclude that it probably hardly matters at all.

Better than a telegram from the Queen

A true story based on affection, the passage of time, a change of heart. And no confusing dog.

I first met Mrs BB (then Miss T) in 1959 while working in London for a cycling magazine. Given our mutual enchantment she willingly accompanied me to Cardiff one Saturday afternoon where I reported the Olympic track cycling trials. Miss T said later cycle racing bored her and she was only entertained when one racer, high on the banked track, toppled over and dislodged others.

Soon after I left the cycling magazine and moved to a hi-fi magazine. Despite this the new Mrs BB continued, for two decades, to proclaim this view of cycle racing.

Time passed. We bought a house in France with a French telly. There we were both drawn into the Tour de France and remained converts thereafter. I shall not try to persuade those who imagine that the TdF is a mere race; it is easily as complicated as cricket and takes time to appreciate fully. What’s more it has the most gorgeous backdrop (ie, France) much of it shot from helicopters. After each transmission, just ended on ITV4 in Britain, we eagerly discussed tactics achieved or missed.

It is my birthday shortly. Changing her painting style completely Mrs BB has created this impressionistic acrylic of the team time trial stage of the TdF. “If he doesn’t want it, I’ll have it,” said Younger Daughter, another TdF convert. Fat chance. A long way from the 1959 Olympic trials Mrs BB and I embraced. “After all you did me a poem,” she said.

I envisage a shiny dark green frame but can’t wait for that.

NOVEL Now up to 108,059 words. Perhaps another 5000 to go.