{"id":948,"date":"2011-01-02T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=948"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:14:53","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:14:53","slug":"the-ninth-day-of-christmas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-ninth-day-of-christmas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ninth Day of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight Maids-a-Milking<\/span>
 <\/span>
Lord knows what happened when<\/span>
he double-clicked on \u2018Ornamental Milkmaids.\u2019<\/span>
He swears he only ordered one.<\/span>
 <\/span>
On Monday, eight cows arrived. They clattered<\/span>
 down the ramp and he signed for them<\/span>
 ( I was out at the time) then herded them<\/span>
 <\/span>
lowing, into our double garage.<\/span>
He was upstairs, rearranging the loft<\/span>
for the milkmaids when I came home.<\/span>
 <\/span>
As I slammed the car door I heard<\/span>
desperate moos and who knows what<\/span>
the poor beasts would have undergone<\/span>
 <\/span>
had the milkmaids not tripped down the path<\/span>
in their snowy aprons, each clanking a pail<\/span>
and calling the name of her favourite cow.<\/span>
 <\/span>
I managed to activate the up and over door<\/span>
and the cows came swaying out, teats hard<\/span>
as carrots. The garage smelt like a city farm.<\/span>
 <\/span>
From that moment life changed; vets\u2019 bills, <\/span>
the milk round, experiments with cream,<\/span>
lines filled with petticoats. We woke at four.<\/span>
 <\/span>
As time went on, the  three-legged stools<\/span>
made holes in our lawn, already threadbare<\/span>
from grazing, and something was happening<\/span>
 <\/span>
to the milkmaids. They grew listless and wan.<\/span>
Most evenings we found ourselves<\/span>
hosing the stalls while they went clubbing.<\/span>
 <\/span>
In the end we made rules. They must only<\/span>
go out at weekends and and be back by eleven.<\/span>
We urged them to mix in better company.<\/span>
 <\/span>
Then luck took a hand and I wept through sheer joy. <\/span>
Eight fairy-tale weddings to leaping Lords, cows<\/span>
happy in Cornwall, cars back in the garage.<\/span>


Ruth Smith<\/span>



Spam Sandwich<\/span>

Every year Christmas creeps then leaps<\/span>
the year\u2019s span like spam makeshift<\/span>

my father\u2019d fry in batter; it was cheap<\/span>
excitement especially his cooking it.<\/span>

We used to prize turkey, its spastic<\/span>
legs braced, throat ripped and murdered<\/span>

but now it\u2019s hens-come-home, bloated<\/span>
with water, or battery Bernard Matthew\u2019s<\/span>

pre-packed and calibrated, trundling off<\/span>
running machines that exorcise all<\/span>

moral decorum; so nothing sacred, nor chuffed<\/span>
for treasuring the treat beyond our Fall,<\/span>

just hi-tech, hi-risk spendthrift, hi-di-high-ness ranks<\/span>
this holiest of times replete truly with sans<\/span>

this, sans that, sandwich merely cups<\/span>
the long-lingered year\u2019s stagger to its stop.<\/span>

Dianne Aslett<\/span>




*Ruth Smith <\/span>says: “I used to teach English but now spend my time travelling and writing poems. Poems have appeared in several poetry magazines, most recently \u2018Magma\u2019 and \u2018Orbis\u2019. Other work has appeared in anthologies including \u2018Entering The Tapestry\u2019 produced by The Poetry School. One has recently been accepted for an anthology in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.” <\/span>

*Dianne Aslett <\/span>says “I have been writing poetry since I was young and
\nhave had a modest number published. I regularly perform my poetry in
\nlocal Birmingham venues.I have been a school teacher and now I am an
\nEnergy Field Healer.  It's quirkiness that makes life worth living.”<\/span>

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

Eight Maids-a-Milking Lord knows what happened whenhe double-clicked on \u2018Ornamental Milkmaids.\u2019He swears he only ordered one. On Monday, eight cows arrived. They clattered down the ramp and he signed for them ( I was out at the time) then herded them lowing, into our double garage.He was upstairs, rearranging the loftfor the milkmaids when I came home. As I slammed the […]<\/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":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-twelve-days-of-christmas-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","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=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23916,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions\/23916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}