Tuesday 28 September 2010

One Fine Day 2


Laura watches a nice young man,
(perhaps newly demobbed), 
a hiker with a pocket Keats in his knapsack,
as he gets off the bus.

'He walks alone by choice, thought Laura. 
He walks with calm, manly decision, 
while my day is a feeble woman's day, 
following a domestic chalk line, 
bound to the tyranny of my house
with its voices saying, 
Clean me, polish me, 
save me from the spider and the butterfly.
It is so long since I measured out a day for myself and said, 
This is mine, I shall be alone. 
Men are so much wiser, she thought,
striding deliberately off,
shaking the press of other people from them
and climbing the lonely hill.
One day soon, she promised herself vaguely
as the bus passed the first cottages of Wealding.'


from One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes

5 comments:

  1. I am very good at walking away from the tyranny of those voices ... but you wouldn't want to live in my house if you're scared of spiders!

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  2. Ah wonderful words from the past ...not that being tied to duty is wonderful! If only I had butterflies in my house ;-)
    Love the old bus poster.

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  3. I'm glad you like the sound of this book. There may well be more to come - particularly her take on the invisibility of the middle aged-woman,

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  4. enjoying these excerpts ....

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  5. Oh, this sounds familiar!

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