Those ol cosmic rays would go down well at the St Andrews market, Max, I reckon. There was bloke there last Saturday who had set up his gullibolometer which shot out smoke from beneath the chair you were invited to sit on with a colander on your head and wooden skittles in your ears attached by window cord. Moving your finger on his mobile phone caused rhythmic arcs of sound to issue from a portable speaker. Rimless Bess may have been inclined to give it a shot. Buttermilk, lumpy or not, would be a good addittion to the gullibolometer man's show.
On 09/01/2013, at 4:47 PM, Max Richards wrote:
> Auntie Bess and the Colour Man
>
>
> Rimless glasses, severe cheekbones made
> unsmiling Auntie Bess the one we feared.
>
> Staying with her you must finish your chores
> before anything in the way of fun.
>
> Weeding the vegetable garden
> under a hot January morning sun,
>
> grinding maize off the cobs for the chooks,
> hand-turning the separator to extract
>
> cream from the cow's milk; then hand-turn
> the machine that made cream slowly
>
> then fast turn into butter! dismantle
> the machines and clean, clean, clean.
>
> Reward? - drink the buttermilk, yuk.
> Pat pat pat the lumps of butter
>
> into shapes for the table later.
> Some will melt on our boiling hot
>
> cobs of 'sweet corn', some on the green peas
> we'd shelled, the sour broad beans we'd shelled,
>
> the new potatoes we'd dug and washed,
> and boiled till they'd begun to peel.
>
> *****
>
> Bess had mislaid her first husband,
> the mysterious Mr Beckett,
>
> but not her daughter Shirley,
> who was in town hairdressing,
>
> waiting to marry her soldier boy.
> Eric would be my cousin one day,
>
> I might stay on their back-blocks sheep farm.
> Shirley would teach me to bake bread,
>
> Eric to break a rabbit's neck with one blow
> if the poisoned jam hadn't done it in.
>
> Bess was remarried - to old uncle Bill.
> Now she was Mrs William King
>
> of Kings Road (No Exit) in his farmhouse
> where uncle and time shared slow routines.
>
> Once it was a big farm - small now
> to suit his stiff old age. One dairy cow,
>
> two idle dogs chained to kennels
> barking at me from under the pines, a dray
>
> his one horse let itself be harnessed to
> and ploddingly pulled taking hay
>
> to the few cattle fattening for beef.
> A tin shed out there too, for his old car.
>
> Which only Bess drove now.
> Uncle was in the dining room
>
> slowly reading the paper
> and clearing this throat.
>
> Come along, we're going to town,
> so auntie can see the colour man.
>
> Her doctor despairs of her headaches -
> someone must know what she needs for her back.
>
> The colour man has taken a Napier room
> and is seeing people in the afternoon.
>
> Sister and I have a free hour on Marine
> Parade with money for two ice creams.
>
> Bess returns, straighter and taller.
> No medicines to go to the chemist for -
>
> she has what she needs on paper,
> and it's not being shown to us youngsters.
>
> Back home, she's moving her bed
> (uncle sleeps in the other room),
>
> so now it faces the other way;
> she's tying colours from the colour man
>
> at each corner of the bed-frame.
> Something to do with cosmic rays.
>
> She'll sleep on it. Next day,
> already she feels rather better.
>
> By the weekend much better.
> By the next, maybe she needs
>
> a further visit to the colour man,
> as he'd predicted. Really,
>
> the help he gives is worth more,
> far more than he charges.
>
> Bess is smiling seriously,
> and so are we. The colour man,
>
> he must have been smiling too.
> Farmers' wives across the whole province
>
> swore by the help he gave them. Hawkes Bay's
> womenfolk after years of painful delays
>
> at last were in line with the cosmic rays.
>
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