Thank You And Damn You JGC

Damn you JGC. It happens every time I go ten-pin bowling. You step up onto the lane wearing those ridiculous shoes with your fingers plunged deep inside a Bakelite sphere. You have no idea what you are doing and after you have released the ball you are just glad that it hasn't taken your fingers with it. And then some supernatural force guides the bowling ball down the lane, crashes it into the pins which collapse like perfectly detonated cooling towers. "A strike" someone shouts and, being of a certain age, you quickly check to see if the cafeteria staff are still working. And then you realise that you have, accidentally, done rather well. If you can do as well as that by sheer chance, what will the results be like if you try, if you think about it, if you refine your action? And you spend the rest of the evening watching your ball trundle down the side alley. The pins become monoliths which will remain standing for centuries.

So thank you JGC for your kind words about my Haiku. Thank you and damn you.

Leaving all poetic pretensions aside, I took up my old occupation of trawling the highways and byways of the Internet in search of joyful stimulation. And I discovered the website of the the auctioneers, Bonhams. What is wonderful about it is that the full catalogues for all the individual auctions are available on-line (these are the things which used to cost an arm and a gavel and therefore to have free on-line access to them is yet another reason to fall down in praise in front of the great web-God).

The catalogue I looked at was for the "Collectors' Sale of Potlids, Goss and Crested China, Commemoratives Art & Antiques". As with all such things, the real exotica can be found at the end of the catalogue so I quickly turned to the final lot, Lot 1304 "A bench seat with painted wrought iron frame, together with a stone bust of a man on a fluted plinth". Now I badly want this item. I think of little else all day (Alexander, who is Alexander?). I picture the bench seat on my yellow balcony. I imagine long conversations with the man on a fluted plinth. I rediscover my muse.

Haiku 75 On a cold dark night A man on a fluted plinth Pines for a bidder