4. ‘SEDUCE’ – a tempting word – should be used with care: not altogether to be trusted.

Happy Lovers

Too much death, I think.  That’s enough misery – drifting round impractical, damp mansions – wondering what’s on earth is going on. No one knows what’s going on. The only answer is to party hard.

I think we should cheer up. I hear you laughing – you think I should cheer up.  I think you  may be right.

These things make me smile: Lovers and Humour. In my opinion, they should be enjoyed together.  But only one lover at a time is my recommendation – otherwise you will fall into Dangerous Liaisons. I will find you running mad in Country Houses for a change, only this time in crinolines and corsets. How highly uncomfortable and impractical. How will I be able to penetrate all those petticoats to discern what is going on and write it down?

What we need now is a joke.  Here it is

Q. What do you call a paranoid dinosaur?

A. Doyouthynkhesaurus

A potential lover hove into view the other week. He was speaking of his Admirable Bed.  Then I realised I had mis-heard him and he is not a potential lover at all. He was talking of his Admiral’s bed. I have no idea what an Admiral’s bed is – but part of me very much wants to find out. Curiosity killed the cat, I remember.  I will have to cast him off before I start. Admiral Lord Nelson’s  bed was also his coffin and we could too quickly become  entangled in shrouds.

(So many bodies, so little time).

Reasons to be cheerful.

Lovers and humour: as mentioned before admirable reasons – but it has to be said that lovers don’t altogether like it if you start giggling too much. They can turn dinosaur and paranoid: Isitdinkysaurus. My lovers grow nervous, they don’t want to be written off of – they don’t want to be written of. Particularly when I write in this mood.  When I could illuminate their bodies to improve a page., fix them for ever in an artificial posture for fun. I think of them naked and vulnerable in bed, I think of me naked and vulnerable in bed.  “Write anything you like,”  emails my true love, “but for GOD’s sake, don’t write about me. LOL x”  Another, whom I have not seen in a while,  is in a sulk and moaning in his bed (for all the wrong reasons). The reason? He is jealous. Dear reader, he too is writing a book. The snake in the garden was more generous than he. The snake shared his fruit.  But my lover thinks that because I am writing, I am stealing his words. Everytime I commit a stroke of black ink to a white page,  I am taking away precious letters from his tome – the worst kind of succubus.

The WordTree is full of fruit I want to say. But I can’t, as his bitterness renders me silent and positively illiterate.  The WordTree’s words are infinite and evergreen. It’s a generous tree that produces the sweetest lexicons for all seasons. No word I pluck from the tree will deprive another of its use.

Reader, I love my lovers I will not write of them.  I will write of the ones that got away – the not lovers.

For this we have to return to vanished Elworth Hall . A summer’s walk  in its meadows and the great chalk rivers that run clear to the sea.  Hidden by the bulrushes and the sweeping golden grasses I take off all my clothes, I slip into the waters and swim, pale as a fish. I slip up river and then return to the hidden bank. I  wade to the earthy shore. In the clay stands a man. His clothes as green as the river, eyeing me with hunter’s eyes.  I recognise him. He is the gamekeeper and there are certain games – I can tell – that he very much wants to play.