tsunami warning

i'm on a roller coaster, people. solo. but one with no rails, with unforeseen dips and curves....we are heading into the last three weeks of school. the work load is of tsunamic (is that even a word?) proportions. i tend to be like an ostrich with her head in the sand. who isn't? madame M (the french mistress) that's who. she had her reports done literally in the third week after the hols. what could she possibly write about, i pondered? accents? vocabulaire? la revolution? beats me.

i spend my days at school wandering from one exam room to the next, sort of lost. dreamy. sieve brained. finding odd (as in strange, irrelevant) jobs to do that aren't remotely linked to the on coming tsunami. like sorting out the giant chess set outside the office (which, i might add, has been annoying me for ten months). poetry flows out of me. reams and reams of it. in blue curly ink. time on my hands? write poetry. fix the chess set. oh um...sigh..what else? blog? yes! as i eye out the pile of unmarked English Language Paper 2's lying belligerently on my desk. this is not going to end nicely. there are reports, the end of term magazine, next year's objectives (NEXT YEARS? who the hell knows that already? madam m, that's who. sigh. the planet might well be spinning the other way round next year for pete's sake) not so, according to mr nyamota, who is being surprisingly kind and patient. the truth is i have absolutely no idea what my objectives will be. aucune idee. zippo. zero. oh well. i'll just wing it. make it up. and then decide next year.

reports. what to say? well done X. he must have done something good along the way, although it's not at all apparent. biscuits and jolly juice all round. congratulations Y, we're so pleased you're leaving. here's a cheap little plastic medal for you. best of british luck, old chap. or: i would advise you to marry off M as soon as possible. there is no hope. you're wasting your money.

and if this isn't enough i have decided at the very last minute to put on a Julius Caesar production...trying to teach students to stab and die magnificently. conjuring up ways to spill liters of blood (water balloons filled with watery tomato sauce?) all ideas welcome, oh bestests. we're going maasai. shukas. spears. ostrich (apt i thought) feather head dresses. beads. twinklies. car tyre sandals. all terrifically roman, really.

the fact is there is an entirely different world in my head to the one spinning around me.

oh. my. god. this is so going to get ugly. everyone else has left the beach, runnin' wide eyed, except me. and my loyal horse. the sea looks strangely empty. the reef is exposed. the dogs have fled. the elephants have run up to the high ground. yachts are spinning the wrong way round.

and me?

i'm dreamily writing poetry in the sand.

(i work better under pressure. i work better under pressure. i work better under pressure.)

(i am brilliant. i am brilliant. i am brilliant. i am brilliant. i am brill-----)

by christ, i had better get on with it or i am history.

(is that the time? oh. off for dinner at the neighbours. can't be late now)

that said, toodely old toot oh best beloveds. bisous X.X.X. extremely poetic ones. extremely. x j

borderlines.

guess where i've been?

too right.

mrs pop's flowers....who could stay away?

but i stayed on the borderline, on the boundary road. it's the brightest field anyway. wouldn't you just love to run in there and lay yerself down and stare up at the blue through the pink? i would. but no no no. i stay on the tracks... life's about dreamin' in any case.

i rode there twice yesterday. hah. who wouldn't have? first time on De La Rey, aka The General, Finest Hoss On The Planet. well. the horse is south african and aptly named after Jacobus Herculaas De La Rey (fondly known as koos), a famous Boer general. I don't think it's a very popular name down south these days.

"...interest in the life and career of De La Rey has recently made a resurgence in South Africa as a result of a song entitled "De la Rey", by the Afrikaans folk singer Bok van Blerk. The song is about a Boer soldier who, towards the end of the 2nd Boer War, after Lord Kitchener had implemented his scorched earth policy, and had burned the Boer's farm to the ground and put his wife and child in a concentration camp facing almost certain death, in desperation and contemplating the destruction of the Boer nation, calls for General De La Rey, a powerful figure even amongst other successful Boer Generals, to lead the Boer Volk (people) to victory.
The Department of Arts and Culture responded to a request for a statement on the song's potentially subversive lyrics[4][5][6] saying that the song was "in danger of being hijacked by a minority of right-wingers", defending the composers' right to free speech and citizens' right to oppose the government through constitutional means, but warning that "those who incite treason, whatever methods they employ, might well find themselves in difficulties with the law."[7] The Democratic Alliance opposition party responded by saying that the song was not nearly as potentially subversive as ANC president Jacob Zuma's song Umshini wami (Zulu for "bring me my machine [gun]").[8][9] - WIKIPEDIA

"...He is generally regarded as the bravest of the Boer generals during the Second Boer War and as one of the leading figures of Boer independence. As a guerrilla, his tactics proved extremely successful. De la Rey opposed the war until the last, but when he was once accused of cowardice during a Volksraad session, he replied that if the time for war came, he would be fighting long after all those clamoring for war had given up. This proved to be the case..." - WIKIPEDIA

still. you can't change a horse's name. bad luck. and i don't mess with that kinda stuff. too much of it lurking just behind the door, in the dark corners, tip toeing behind you when you aren't looking. so de la rey aka The General it will stay. and what a fine horse he is.

the old horse is named rhino. go figure. as i said, you can't change a horse's name. no sirree. he stumbles stiffly along, floppy eared but armed with a lion's heart. he always warms up at the end. i love the sound of his shod feet cantering along the mud packed roads between the maize, wind in my hair, sun on my back. who wouldn't feel like the luckiest person alive?

so toodely old toot, y'all. hell, i might even head back to those flowers and cross the borderline this time, on The General. he ain't no coward. wouldn't you?

bisous y'all X X X "lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff" ones...x j.