Reunion


Darling, may you always be blessed with moderate success,
so that when you stand for long minutes
telling us how you became a producer at the BBC

someone knows it was only on local radio and starts asking awkward questions –
seems it was a ‘one-off’
            
and then someone else drifts over and asks straight out
whether you think you’ll ever manage to get the morning rush-hour spot back again
now that your stint as producer is over,
or has that bastard of a station manager kept the young fella on daytime,
leaving you stranded on the graveyard shift –
and how are you coping, in the back-of-beyond with the sheep-shaggers?

and someone else says ‘Oh, aren’t you in London any more?’

and you mutter ‘no’
and something about the West Country where they grow apples

and someone incredibly well-meaning who is a social worker
asks after your wife – they expect she’s quite fluent in English by now
and will have got to grips with supermarket shopping

then the first bloke says he sees you’ve drawn the short straw again,
according to the Radio Times, having to work over the holidays –
because it’s no joke putting out a live show at 5 am on Christmas Day:
that station manager must really have it in for you

and after you make an excuse to leave early,
they all wonder what I ever saw in you
(although they used to say the opposite)

but you put us all on Facebook first thing in the morning.


* Bev Ellis fled the chalk-face due to catastrophic government initiatives.  She has been writing poetry for four years and can’t understand why her work is frequently assumed to have been written by a male poet; something to do with ‘an unflinching eye’ apparently. She is a life-long Alice Cooper fan.