‘Hybrid’ working…

Apparently, the pandemic has encouraged employers to embrace hybrid/home working as the norm for the future.

This is interesting, and encouraging, particularly for disabled employees who may have found themselves previously excluded from the workplace for whatever reason.

It has made me wonder, however…just how inclusive is the post-pandemic workplace, in reality?

I’m going to do some research, and come back to you on this one. Meanwhile, I would really appreciate your own views and experiences. Please take a moment to share them, here.

Thanks, guys.

All this thought about the ‘D’ word…

Has got me thinking. Well, remembering, in fact.

I wrote the previous poems, (you know I’m really not a poet, right?), a long time ago.

Then, this morning, as I was trawling through my thousands of old emails, looking for something, I found something else. The evidence of a broken heart, poured out over dozens of emails – the wreckage of a marriage broken by infidelity, with the wound gaping open as one party moved on a little too quickly for the other.

It played out over weeks, turned into months – each and every message more scathing than the last. One moment, we are discussing practicalities (money, assets, cat insurance) and in the next venom is being fired because a solos holiday has been booked just weeks after the split. Then there are two close family bereavements for one of us, and the whole unholy mess gets mixed together to create something more horrible than anyone can imagine.

The ‘how could you?’ turns into ‘I’m seeing a lawyer’ after one party assumes they are temporarily separated, working at it, while the other embraces single life by shagging anything within a ten-metre distance. Or so it’s perceived, at the time.

Twenty minutes, and trails of read emails later, I found that I was sitting at my desk with tears rolling down my cheeks. It really is the gift that keeps on giving, it’s open heart surgery without anaesthesia.

And then I hit the delete button, again and again, and smiled. I have the love of the kindest, sweetest man and I never thought that would happen – not after what happened, all that time ago.

Without that experience, I would not be where I am, now. I am thankful.

I hope that he, the other participant in all that warfare, has at least a fraction of what I have. The guns have been permanently locked away, never to see daylight again.

Nobody gets out alive…

Or at least, unscathed.  Do they?

After everything breaks down, 

After the shattered pieces are scooped up from the fields of war,

When the shouting has stopped, 

The doors have been slammed,

We disappear into separate rooms,

Locks appear on doors,

Lawyers instructed, 

Cameras in rooms, to check nothing leaves,

While we are out at work, 

And if so much as a tea bag is taken, 

All hell breaks loose…

While the most precious of all sit in front of TVs, 

So tiny, still, 

With tender hearts wide open, bleeding, unguarded, 

Watching cartoons, but hearing guns,

In the kitchen, 

As we fight on.

For Sale…

The house creeks in an emptying shell

and groans

disbelief 

in our plans…that its faith in us was wasted

                  disregarded

                                   like an old, unwanted tabloid.

It rages disgust

through pipes that clunk

and sinks that block

        and stink

and fuses that blow

as a new draft finds its way under the door…

each blow of the hammer

drives a stake deeper

into the heart

sucks the life out

through the chimney

the welcome mat now a big, fat liar.

Life’s Gifts…

She is my oldest friend.  

Since we were seven, we’ve shared everything together: scraped knees, first crushes, triumphs and heartbreaks.  Lately, though, we have been at a distance.  I know that as life throws challenges your way, the more we can let things slide from the centre of our view – this I know.  Covid hasn’t helped.  

She is the type of person that can be as warm as melting butter then freeze you with one look when the wind changes direction.  And I have been on the receiving end of both.

Our lives took different directions: the first two-thirds of mine were about achieving as much as I could, with my career.  Until AS came along and ripped that to shreds.  She had the babies she had wanted all her life.  I chose the wrong men. The babies are all grown, now, and she has the luxury of more time to spend on herself than she has had in years.

Our lives have come full-circle.  

We will meet up for lunch, every so often, and the time falls away. I can still see the seven-year-old girl with the pixie haircut and brown Mary Janes on her feet.  Does she still see the lanky, strawberry-blonde pigtailed girl who ran everywhere?  Because she is still here, deep inside the body that doesn’t run, doesn’t skip, anymore.