My likes have changed with time and fortune.
A question of where I’m at and how I feel.
Eating Tournedo steak in the Operakällaren
might not quite compare with meeting some fellas in
the Pig and Whistle of the Rhodesia Castle;
these stewards were sickening, the Swedish meals supreme.
I learnt from both of them, they being at two extremes.
But let me go to childhood thoughts, childhood books and childhood rhymes;
times when I loved to play in the wind and run in the rain,
or chase the sea and roll in the mud or lie in the sun.
Time to find things out; find myself and reach the day when I’m able to say
“I disagree. That’s not for me” and make a stance.
There was always the chance, I suppose, that I’d fall for love
like all boys do as they shove their clumsy way to adulthood.
As a young man, music and sport held the day.
I loved to play in orchestras and bands in Scotland, England
and foreign lands. Eventually I went abroad to live and
teach my scant experience of life and English to foreign kids.
Being abroad is being alone, like playing trombone in a string quartet.
Yet, I learnt what made me tick and how to deal with loneliness,
how to stand above the rest and how to fall in love.
Now here I am, an oldish man but still with favourite things
that have changed a bit as I now sit and get around in a wheelchair.
I wear the pants with workmen here so my strength is clear to them.
I play with words, I bluff my way through maths tuition but in addition,
as it were, I think my favourite thing is that much-practiced skill
of drinking wine until all around are drunk and talking stupidly.
Then off to bed I slink, with help of course but rapidly.