{"id":652,"date":"2010-04-28T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=652"},"modified":"2010-04-28T12:00:29","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T12:00:29","slug":"alan-girling-says-never-offer-your-seat-to-an-old-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/alan-girling-says-never-offer-your-seat-to-an-old-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Girling says never offer your seat to an old woman…"},"content":{"rendered":"


Purple and Teal<\/span>


Never offer your seat <\/span>
to an old woman<\/span>
until you\u2019ve inspected<\/span>
her wolf-<\/span>
grey hair <\/span>
for splashes of purple in front,<\/span>
or streaks of teal at back,<\/span>
the existence of which should <\/span>
alert you to the danger <\/span>
of assuming too much <\/span>
about aging\u2014<\/span>
gratitude leavened <\/span>
with vernal wrath\u2014<\/span>
and further suggest a life <\/span>
in which fresh fire <\/span>
pierces the natural, <\/span>
and loss finds its seat <\/span>
in the rear: then years too <\/span>
will recede, and grey, <\/span>
purple and teal <\/span>
        fiercely <\/span>
dance down <\/span>
        narrow-<\/span>
               ing <\/span>
        aisles of <\/span>
               ever <\/span>
        emptying <\/span>
buses.<\/span>



<\/font>* Alan Girling<\/span>
\nused to write fiction but these days it's mainly poetry. He suspects
\nhis old stories were really poems in disguise. Examples of both can be
\nfound in Blue Skies, Hobart, The
\nMacGuffin, Smokelong, Six Sentences, Ken*again<\/span>, and Ink Sweat & Tears<\/span> among others.<\/p>\n

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

Purple and TealNever offer your seat to an old womanuntil you\u2019ve inspectedher wolf-grey hair for splashes of purple in front,or streaks of teal at back,the existence of which should alert you to the danger of assuming too much about aging\u2014gratitude leavened with vernal wrath\u2014and further suggest a life in which fresh fire pierces the natural, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}