Slavery was abolished 200 years ago and yesterday I went to the British Museum for the bicentenary Resistance and Remembrance event to mark the occasion. There were many interesting events and many interesting nooks and crannies of the museum I’d not previously discovered. I saw my old friend Patience Agbabi read in the long gallery that was once part of the British Library and perform a new poem about Phylis Wheatley, a slave who learnt to read and write and became the first black person to be published. That said, not sure if she pre-dates Pushkin…As Pushkin was Russian and Ethiopian people like to pretend he was white because ‘black’ really refers to ‘negro’ or ’slave’ in the yukky continuum of race science. But hey, yesterday was not a day for quibbles. Jean Binta Breeze was the star of the show, and she read a new poem commissioned for the occasion. Even Maya Angelou could not have touched her performance that day. She was effervescent, dignified, passionate and rebellious too. Everything a poet should be. I will be sharing a stage with her on Friday 20 April at the Battersea Arts Centre for a show called Malika Likes, which presents poets invited by Malika Booker who is my writing buddy. It will be an honour. I’ll also be there with another writer who I like a lot called Denise Saul. Details of Malika’s one-woman show Unplanned.

By the way isn’t it ironic that while the slave owners WERE compensated for their financial losses at the end of slavery, slaves and their descendants have never seen a penny! Gordon Brown – prerecorded by satellite – said he was proud to have been involved in the minting of a commemorative coin. Shame he couldn’t also have been involved in donating some of these commemorative coins to regeneration and investment charities for black business and communities. Yeah, it was a long time ago, and how can we calculate it fairly etc…but at least pay out the equivalent of the monies paid in reparation to the slave owners. After all, poetry is priceless, but money talks.

Just got back from the Imperial War Museum where I paid six quid to see the Animals’ War exhibit. I thought it might have been really heart rending like the Holocaust Exhibition, but it was pretty lame (pun intended). The most poignant thing was a photo of Marjan, who must have been the oldest lion in the world when he died in Kabul Zoo in January 2002, age 50. Just checked the BBC story: they say Marjan was 25, anyway, he was bloody old. Apparently he mauled some Taliban gung-ho fool to death when he climbed into his cage to prove how brave he was. The bloke’s brother then chucked a grenade into his enclosure to get revenge, maiming and blinding Marjan, who probably hadn’t eaten for days/weeks because half the zoo staff weren’t paid or had had their houses blown up. Nice.

I also learnt that 400,000 people had their cats and dogs put down in the first four days of the Second World War in Greater London. It didn’t say why. Gas masks for pets cost £9 which must have been a small fortune then, so perhaps it was pre-emptive. I also saw an assortment of goat mascots, medal-winning pigeons, parachuting Jack Russells and lots of stuff about cavalry. The Polish Cavalry uniform is the most bizarre contraption, it made the soldiers look like avenging angels as they wore these wing-shaped arches of feathers worn over armour. Apparently the noise the feathers made in the wind frightened the opposing army’s horses.

It’s amazing the lengths people go to in order to make war more palatable and fun! Then again, there’s never REALLY any excuse for sloppy attire now is there?

I also saw pictures of Laika, the first dog in space, who was a Moscow stray. Every one thought Laika would come home yapping about martians as if she was the new star of the Cadbury’s Smash ads, but of course they just stuck her up there, strapped into her seat so she couldn’t move, and let her die. Still she did get to be the first dog in space, so that’s something I suppose. Look how cute she was. (Blag Lady does not really agree with space travel: humans have made enough of a mess of it down here, and anyway, there’s plenty of time for space travel in the grand continuum, but hey, there’s a certain 2001 Space Odyssey/Ziggy Stardust chic to the styling and outfits which provides a touch of panache.)

However, while I may have made this sound like a fun afternoon out, I’m not joking when I say ‘I saw a picture of…blah blah’. I shuffled from one board-mounted archive shot to the next for half an hour, which made me feel like a teenager on a trip to the HMS Victory and the most engaging thing was the Blackadder Goes Forth clip where Blackadder goes forth and shoots a carrier pigeon. Six quid to see 2 minutes of Blackadder. Not a bargain.

I was in Tottenham Court Road which is an old stomping ground as I used to work in an office nearby. I saw these boots in a cordoned off area where workmen were. I couldn’t decide whether I liked the brown on brown of the boots and the mud and the Sun or just the look of the boots on the pile of mud abandoned by a barefoot workman in the distance. That would be the dream shot. Or should I get more technically advanced and edit the shot so I had the brown of the boots and the context of the pile of mud? I think I should have tried an edit but I don’t tend to mess with the pics much. As it happens technology has answered the conundrum for me as currently Movable Type is being arsey and won’t let me upload the other pic, which of course, now I can’t access it, I prefer. Another beautiful spring day. What’s beautiful about it? The clear blue sky, the crisp, clear air, even here in the city. The warmth of the sun: the bruiser cat is asleep on top of the garages out back. I joined an online forum and I’m writing a haiku a day. I can’t decide whether it’s good to keep my hand in like that, or whether it actually makes me feel like I’ve done some work – poetry work that is – and therefore allows me to become complacent. Other people write haiku and then we vote on whose we like best. It’s slightly pathetic but I do get excited if I get 5 stars.

The Pope Mobile aka Mr Magoo aka the ‘eco-jeep’ has been sold to a muslim gentleman from Gumtree! A fitting end to my role in the life of the papal vehicle. When we concluded the deal, and Dr Blog had confirmed that my clutch of used tenners were not counterfeit (as instructed via the Loot.com website on how to buy and sell a car), I offered my hand as is customary in such matters. But said gent took a step back and said he was sorry, but ‘he didn’t shake hands with women’. Thankfully he was happy to hand over the cash, fit a new clutch, and tow it away to a mechanic, all so his lady wife could have a little runaround! Although I have to say, there was a certain speed to the proceedings which suggested this was not the first little runaround he’d bought for the missus (that week). But no matter – at last I can tick ’sell car’ off my list. Had I put it on the list. Dammit. Is it too late to add it posthumously for the sake of a sense of achievement?

Talking of lists: the ticking has not been proceeding to plan. It’s all very will with items such as ‘make dentist appointment’ but ‘finish poetry book’ is slightly more tricky and not nearly ticky enough. That is when the dentist appointment swiftly gets replaced by ‘make doctor’s appointment’ and another tick can be made. However, the BIG TICK is still a glaringly empty box screaming TICK ME TICK ME TICK ME NOW! Next step: divide big tick items into smaller tick items and tick them. Include items such as ‘tick list’. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. And so life goes and the next thing you know it’s 2012 and we’re in the middle of the London Olympics. ‘Win gold medal in badminton doubles with Lady Bling’. Tick.

Ten things from a week away in February.

1. I remember my dream. It’s a recurring dream. I have a large housing association flat. It is huge and perfect and there are many rooms, more than I need. I am a tenant but I live elsewhere. I know I need to go back to the flat, but it becomes a terror I cannot face. This is exacerbated by the fact that I am 98% sure I have left a young kitten there without food and water. As each day goes by I am more and more sure the kitten will be dead: starved and emaciated at my neglectful hands. Eventually I make my mum come with me. There are two kittens; one little skinny black thing that is barely alive, and another that is dead somewhere. I don’t see or smell the dead kitten, but I know it’s there. I wake up and dream the dream again at some unspecified time in the future. I remember the dream.

2. I discover that the Catholic Church allows Sundays off for Lent. We cook a large chicken roast dinner, and I stretch out the bird over three days, pick off the carcass for soup. The Fishy 1 chops up the livers and melts butter on top to make chicken liver pate. I decide soup is ok and pate not. There is no logic to this decision. All week I look longingly at sizzling bacon. Ah, the pleasures of deprivation are endless.

3. Miss Fish & Friend skinny dipping in the Atlantic in Cornwall. Recommended. The sea foam is up, whipping across Pra Sands which is not the Par Sands where I went on my last ever family holiday and got sunburnt in a canoe and a vintage 1940s swimming costume.

4. I have a room with a view to the sea. You can hear it when you open the window. I open the window when the radiator is on. It is difficult/easy to equate this to polar bears on melting icecaps.

5. I decide to stay another three days. The sea will batter the poems out of me.

6. I read The Talented Mr Ripley. Yes, a very good book. I have always liked Patricia Highsmith. Also dip into Daljit Nagra’s Look We Have Coming To Dover!. This is the first UK poet of colour Faber have published in 25 years or something. I know Daljit. It is a good book. Inspiring, yet depressing, in that ‘I should be there and yet I’m so not’ kind of way. Then I re-read Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapture. Big things about love. Bad Cop says I need now to establish my foreverness. What with that and the Alll About My Father stuff I am stuck. All I can write is a daily haiku and the blog. The opposite of foreverness.

7. I come back to an ‘unfortunately…’ email. Now is the time for incidental music. We had a violinist and a cellist with us which I think would be appropriate for my ‘poor me’ attitude-du-jour. We discussed this often and I love the idea of live incidental music colouring the day. ‘Oh Dear the Butter Beans Did Not Cook!’ – The Operetta, coming soon to a small seaside town near you. ‘Dear Delia, It is All Your Fault!’ the sequel. ‘Ooh this walk is more tiring than I thought’, a musically illustrated meditation in six parts. That kind of thing. Marvellous.

8. I remember I am supposed to read Einstein. I am most intrigued by an Encyclopedia of (American) Death called Final Exits that I have bought for a friend’s birthday. (This book was bought at the Clapham Bookshop on Clapham High Street – the ONLY INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOP IN THE WHOLE OF LAMBETH which is struggling to survive, not because people aren’t buying enough books but because the landlord keeps hiking up the rent as if these hardworking folk are Tesco Metro. Anyone reading this who lives in the vicinity, drop Lambeth an email, or drop Amazon for a week and pay an extra 50p for your book there…) Perhaps I will hand the reference book on death over. Perhaps not. Did you know, for example, that: ‘Deaths from narcissism and related disorders since 1975 total 13,983′, or, sticking with ‘N’, that 31,987 people died from ‘Nostalgia’ as recorded on their death certificate. Laughing gas ain’t so funny either: it destroys blood cells, bone marrow and 700 people breath their last on nitrous oxide each year.

9. We play Scrabble, Cranium, Perudo – as featured in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean II’ – where I fall from a great height after an inspired call only to get over excited and fuck up forever after – (there, that’s where my foreverness is), and the first line game, where MiLady O’the Lake discovers the Screwtape Letters and I discover Confessions of a Stuntman which is, truly the most f-nah-f-nah book of all time. The First Line Game is a very good game. I share it here.
a) Assemble group of friends in country house
b) Select a book from bookshelf.
c) Read jacket blurb to assembled company. Write down the first line.
d) Assembled company write their version of the ‘first line’ of selected title.
e) Each person votes for whichever they think is the real ‘first line’.
f) One point if you guess write, 1 point each vote your line gets.
g) Feel triumphant if anyone votes for you, or if you are sharp enough to sort wheat from chaff from wheat.

10) Will we go back to Prussia Cove next year? The brothers who own this country estate operate a system whereby whoever had the week you want last year has first refusal next time around. So we are on the ladder, on our way up to April, with aspirations and designs on August in the Manor House with its own private beach. Will there be a Scilly Swim between the isles? Will the butter beans cook next time? Will I ever beat Jo at Perudo? Einstein, clever thing that he was, has the answer: ‘I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.’