The Invalid Poem

 What happens when a poem turns out to be untrue. Does one have to discard it.

I knocked off the piece of doggerel below last thing last night in honour of our historic visit to the vaccine centre today. I haven't printed it off to go into the file but I like it the more I  look at it and so it might make it into the squad for any further print book. 

But the visit was abortive which makes the poem potentially invalid by reason of its untruth. Either I was wrongly advised I could go or the volunteers at the centre weren't up to date with the latest state of play. But never mind. It was a nice day for a walk and a further episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. I am now booked-in rather than walk-in and will have a go later this week. 

I am not in the business of finding fault with the heroic NHS who are doing much better than marvellously. I was told in writing last year  by someone who must be non compos mentis that,

The NHS is not God.  

and I've never been able to agree more with anything that came from such diametrically opposed reasoning. The main difference is, of course, that the NHS exists. It is only a secondary consideration, but still a crucial one, that the NHS has been doing something about it whereas libertarians and their elected governments, so keen to defend their own freedoms at the expense of others and ready to cite 'God' whenever they run out of other justifications, have presided over unnecessary carnage.

I'll look forward to Thursday instead.

Meanwhile the poem looks likeable enough and so far is marked 'stet'. Bob and Terry, also known as Sailor Boy and Racetrack Wiseguy, had their lovely walk in the early Spring sun and the episode didn't turn out as expected.

 

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I finally became a proper Graham Swift completist with Out of This World over the weekend. So gorgeous to read, so much to enjoy and admire without that novel being in his top few, perhaps. Most novelists would be very glad of anything that good.  With such a vast range of references in such a relatively few pages, I strongly suspect the underlying poem is far better than I'm giving it credit for. If there is a contemporary novelist who seemed born for the role, to who it appears to come so naturally, I don't know who it is.

I gave myself a break from Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Benjamin Britten which is 'detailed'. I'm not sure how much detail one needs. It would be of more value to a more devoted Britten admirer and I appreciate that level of high resolution in books on Larkin. I'm back with it now, tyhinking that I can make it to the end and read Vita Sackville-West's The Edwardians before the grand arrival of the monumental Thom Gunn letters.

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It is 'one of those things' that many of the more successful betting coups happen when they are not advertised by Racetrack Wiseguy. I had thought I was happy to lock down until battle commences at Cheltenham on 16th but I was tempted out of it and landed an easy double on Saturday. And then with a free bet that Corals kindly added in, I put Champ into the portfolio of investments at 5/1 to go with the special offer of 3/1 for the Champion Hurdle snapped up on Honeysuckle.

The Three Wise Men will be reconvening here around about the 11th in the hope of directing all who enter here towards the pay out windows.