{"id":3767,"date":"2012-12-26T09:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-12-26T09:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=3767"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:16:18","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:16:18","slug":"the-second-day-of-christmas-andy-bennet-michael-bartholomew-biggs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-second-day-of-christmas-andy-bennet-michael-bartholomew-biggs\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Day of Christmas: Andy Bennett, Michael Bartholomew-Biggs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Letter to Alfie
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

On a beach in Alicante,
\na hundred days and a thousand miles from Whitby,
\nMummy will read the vampire story she just unwrapped.
\nBecause it\u2019s nice to get away once in a while.<\/p>\n

Daddy\u2019s eleventh Playfair Annual
\nis already out of date. Kindle saw to that.
\nNights with the boys are scarce these days
\nand trivia yellows in the sun, unpursued.<\/p>\n

Put them both on the shelf, there\u2019s a good lad.
\nNext to Jamie\u2019s fine.
\nCareful, though \u2013 don\u2019t break the spines!
\nDon\u2019t crease the covers!
\nDon\u2019t fold down corners because
\nsometimes you read when you\u2019re drunk
\nand remembering a three-digit number
\nis just too much hassle.<\/p>\n

OK, you\u2019re too young to get that.
\nI\u2019ll explain when you\u2019re older.
\nMeantime, if you ever need a bookmark,
\nI\u2019ll take you to the Railway Museum.<\/p>\n

Put them on the shelf, thassit.
\nTreat them nice. They\u2019re Presents<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This, however,
\nThis little thing with a picture of a Tyger on it,
\nThis is a book<\/em>.
\nThis is your<\/em> book.<\/p>\n

And because it\u2019s your book,
\nyou can chew it, swallow it, digest it,
\ncover it with the endless snot from your nose,
\nleave chocolate footprints on its pages,
\ntake it in the bath with Mr Matey,
\nstuff it into satchels, into rucksacks,
\nthe pockets of blazers,
\nand the first leather jacket you\u2019ll ever own.<\/p>\n

(Don\u2019t try that with Camus.
\nIt won\u2019t impress girls as much as you\u2019ll think it will).<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get prissy about your book.
\nIt\u2019s tougher than you think.
\nIt can take every crease and wrinkle in the plates;
\nthe cherryade splashes from your seventh birthday party;
\nthe black thumb-smudges dark as printer\u2019s ink;
\nthe underlines, sidelines, headlines, bylines,
\nand little annotations you thought would make you sound clever.
\nIt can handle the mud from six different festivals;
\nthe pages crinkled from lashings of beer and dew;
\neven the dodgy stain from where you projectile vomited
\nat seventeen and nothing in your room stood a chance.<\/p>\n

Even with a broken spine,
\nyour book will still function.
\nYour book will grow with you,
\nand you with it.<\/p>\n

And when the ghost of a small triangle
\nhaunts the corner of every page,
\nand the leaves are thinning like Daddy\u2019s hair,
\ntake a fat crayon, and write your name in it.<\/p>\n

Then, leave it at a train station
\nnear where the charter\u2019d Thames does flow
\nand walk away
\nsinging The Verve.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Andy Bennett<\/strong> is a poet and comedian who hates writing his own bio. So if you could all imagine a bio here that would be grand. Think a 21st Century Lord Rochester with no money and you’re pretty close.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Christmas Catalogue<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Luke 11:11<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The year he got his model train<\/p>\n

he hardly got up from the floor<\/p>\n

while three trucks trundled round and round<\/p>\n

the clack and clatter sounded real<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The year she got her house for dolls<\/p>\n

she was hardly off her knees<\/p>\n

to move the tiny furnishings.<\/p>\n

The chairs and crockery looked real.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The year that both of them got bikes
\nthey could hardly stay indoors
\nbut cruised past frost-soft holly hedges.
\nWhen they tried to ride no-hands
\nthe prickles proved quite sharply real.<\/p>\n

As adults they can be embarrassed,
\nlooking back on all the presents
\nmany children never got.
\nNostalgia can feel tissue-thin
\nbeside brown-paper wrapped regrets.<\/p>\n

Old tangled string still fastens parcels
\nand our hope of someone knowing
\nwhat it is we really want \u2013
\nthen giving it. No disappointments
\nand no tricks that bite or sting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs<\/strong> (http:\/\/mikeb-b.blogspot.co.uk\/<\/a><\/span>) is poetry editor of the on-line magazine London Grip. \u00a0He is also a co-organiser of the Islington reading series Poetry in the Crypt. \u00a0His next collection is due from Shoestring Press in 2013.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letter to Alfie On a beach in Alicante, a hundred days and a thousand miles from Whitby, Mummy will read the vampire story she just unwrapped. Because it\u2019s nice to get away once in a while. Daddy\u2019s eleventh Playfair Annual is already out of date. Kindle saw to that. Nights with the boys are scarce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3767"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23943,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3767\/revisions\/23943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}