Poems

I got a bit ruthless with my entertainment about ten years ago:

– stopped going to the cinema because of all the noise and because the films I went to see were flashing light shows (I used to like a bit of “arthouse” cinema but we never got to see that)

– stopped watching TV because the whole box-set thing stole your time: we lost a whole bank holiday watching a Danish detective thing and that was the end for me

– I love to read but Twitter finds me poems and newspaper stories that mean I read for two hours each day, but I barely read a book.

I finished a book of poems yesterday but only because our cricket match was rained off. We sat for three hours waiting to agree that it was off. I carry books in my cricket bag for just such an occasion. There I was sitting reading poems (the collection was terrible, btw) when one of them totally got to me. It was about a woman’s experience with her father’s Alzheimer’s and a verse about incontinence made me cry. So I’m sitting amongst these kids who think I’m weird for reading (let alone reading poems) and trying not to let them see that I’m properly blubbing. But of course, that’s the point of poems, right: to make you feel.