Hi Sally,
Thanks for these comments! With regard to the customes I intended what I 
wrote to infer that the narrator saw the customed and then followed them (or 
assumed or copied them).
The narrator is only slightly based on me - and I was in a discussion a week 
or so back where Eliot's Prufrock poem and small spoons featured. I guess I 
wrote what I wrote without realising until I'd written it and realised what 
was there.
I guess the narrator could be Eliot or Prufrock - being written as "you"! Or 
I could mention a tea bag!
Bob
Who thinks it's been a bit chilly to wander aound listening out for mermaids 
yesterday or today!

>From: sally evans <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: New Sub: Measuring Up
>Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 19:32:28 +0000
>
>I like this, Bob. One ambiguity noticed: do you mean
>the customs you noticed and then followed?
>or do you mean you observed the customs  and then went on observing them
>(slavishly perhaps)?
>Also (rolling my sleeves up)
>I like the 'simple abstract nouns' bit - and then find coffee spoons again 
>a
>bit predictable for the ending (while Prufrock, yes he was predictable, 
>with
>the bottoms of his trousers rolled)
>May the unpredictable still happen! May the mermaids sing to you!
>cheers
>SallyE
>
>on 28/2/06 5:51 pm, Bob Cooper at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > H'm, should have been working hard after work... instead:
> > A first draft for any comments:
> >
> > Measuring Up
> >
> > You drape socks on the radiator,
> > each one pulled straight, in pairs.
> > No-one said you would choose this life:
> > things happened, things didn’t. Sometimes
> > the choices were yours, sometimes not.
> > The hours asleep, the longer hours awake
> > at home, at work, the daydreams
> > when travelling, the meals, the customs
> > you observed and then followed, clothes
> > you assumed would say something
> > and the hairstyles, shoes, which quietened
> > with age. How your accent changed
> > and how you tried to turn, by faith,
> > complex yet simple abstract nouns into verbs -
> > words like hope and love. Each cup of coffee
> > you’ve drunk after spooning in the granules
> > sipped while still warm in afternoons
> > before what happens next.
> >
> > Bob Cooper
> >
> > (who, you might want to know, has read - and borrowed or stolen - 
>something
> > TS Eliot wrote)