Always Learning - a column by Swindon Link Poetry Correspondent Maurice Spillane

I was on my own because my wife had gone to Australia to see our new grandson. She prepared the beds and said: “All you’ve to do is feed and entertain.”
I enquired from the girls about allergies. The text back said one is normal, another is vegan, and the third suffers from celeriac. I know it’s coeliac, but I’d a fixation about getting it wrong, so out it came unbidden as celeriac. 
I use age as an excuse: paediatric and podiatrist, chiropractor and chiropodist. I am Mr. Malaprop, with a nod to Oscar Wilde.
On the way from the airport I told them I’d prepared lunch, pasta from rice flour (coeliac-tick), with tomatoes and courgettes (vegan-tick). They asked to see the packet of ingredients. Three heads like wizened experts around the label. I got a pass.
I gave them my grand tour of Oxford next day. On High Street, I pointed to a plaque commemorating Robert Boyle. 
They knew his law that the volume of a gas varies inversely with its pressure and discussed him at length. I’d forgotten that temperature had to be constant. 
And so it went, the pleasure of walking with three young people, observing, debating, energised - and an elder learning.
Samuel Ullman’s wonderful poem on Youth kept bubbling up for me over the few days:

Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigour of the emotions.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

www.mauricespillane.co.uk

Pulpit Pub in Old Town for Open Mic, Wednesday 28 October at 7:30.
 

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