DOING TIME

DOING TIME

DOING TIME

And so it happened I found myself
for the first time in two years
propping up the bar of the Three Tuns
in Borehamwood, not really
my local, only I’d not got
much choice, I was thinking
as I pulled out the only five-pound note
I’d seen all year, uncurling it
on oak like a revelation when
some bloke tapped my elbow
as they would in the days before
I changed my clothes
to white sheets, black shoes.
So where’re you from, love?

I presumed the startled look meant
he knew the place, so as he choked
on his third Guinness I recounted
how, barely an hour ago, I had
unveiled and crept below
the level of the hedge to avoid
setting off the lights, thereby
alerting the nuns who would
otherwise have had to summon
a committee to determine whether
permission should be granted
or not on this occasion; and why
I felt the need to leave the grounds
at all. Why indeed, I thought, as I
tiptoed back to aforesaid hedge
in the only pair of heels

I’d kept. Exactly when
they took against me was
hard to say as I’d scrubbed
enough floors in my time and
cooked a hundred pies, picked up
all the leaves in autumn, one
by one, visited the elderly, sick
and dying, led vespers, sang and read.
The thought I might be,
well, writing a book was
a little troubling.

So when I tried to apply
to travel the two hundred and
sixty miles to spend one day
with my mother who was
dying in the hills, the Superior said
she must be really ill for you
to even think of asking.
When they finally voted me
out, in my own time, of course,
but preferably before the 4th,
I could think of only one reply
as to ‘whether I’d be able
to re-adjust without help’:
not in these shoes.