Poetry: On covid false alarms and the thoughts of Terry Pratchett

A column from Maurice Spillane of Poetry Swindon.

I got covid for a second time recently. Well, a slight exaggeration as I’d had it for only two hours.

My wife and I helped a close friend the day before her wedding. We started a bit late so missed breakfast, worked through lunch and in late afternoon I headed home to walk the dog. I felt really ill in the car and being anxious about mixing at the wedding, I took a covid test. To my horror, I saw the red line displayed along the bottom.

I couldn’t go to the wedding but decided my wife shouldn’t miss it. I disinfected everything I’d touched and took my PC and books to the guest room to isolate. Then I phoned a hotel and booked a room for my wife so she wouldn’t have to come home. She said she’d clear it with the bride but would come home anyway for her wedding clothes. I had WhatsApp buzzing to garner sympathy from the extended family. When my wife came home, she phoned from the kitchen, saying I should come down and see the tester.

I should’ve gone to Specsavers! I’d incorrectly read the tester upside down without my glasses.  Needless to say, the waves of hilarity that weekend drowned me. I did feel stupid.

The only thing to do in a situation like that is to find poems on the subject. Robert Service, who wrote “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” had a gem:

 

Stupidity, woe's anodyne,

Be kind and comfort me in mine;

Smooth out the furrows of my brow,

Make me as carefree as a cow.

Terry Pratchett had a few poetry lines in his novel, Monstrous Regiment:

The enemy isn’t men,

or women.

It’s bloody stupid people

and no one has

the right to be

stupid.

 

So there!

www.mauricespillane.com