Weapon of Choice:
Next meeting of Harbour Lights Poets will be Sunday 27th of May at 2pm as usual in the meeting room at the Look and Sea Centre above the Harbour Lights Café. My email: dafbelt@outlook.com
Much as I would most often prefer to sit and write when I am at home alone, ‘Poetrising’, as my husband calls it when I sit scribbling away on my own, it was a warm day for a change and I grasped the nettle in more ways than one, taking the opportunity to tidy up out little back garden.
Starting with the Daffodils that had past their most glorious stage, and had finished flowering. All that was left of them was a mess of floppy green leaves. The bedding plants; Geraniums, Petunias, Antirrhinums, and Sweet Peas were all still on the polystyrene boxes, looking as though they were suffering grade A. Pot-bound-itis.
I had pulled lots of the pots forward and had been working on the garden table to save my back from too much bending over. I didn’t want to find that I was not able to ride my bike the next day due to unaccustomed labour. There were several metal pots that did not have draining holes at their base and over winter they had become smelly, soggy, muddy messes and the flowers that were in them when they were bought; Tulips, had suffered from the soaking and completely rotted. They were beyond saving. There weren’t that many of the offending pots and I set about looking for a tool or two that I could get the job done with, without having to wait for Steve to come home and do it for me, when he had been working all day and would want to sit down, have a cup of tea and catch up on the news.
The club hammer was easy to locate in my husbands tool box and a further search through drill bits chisels and other smaller items, brought just the thing to light, a big-ish centre punch. Then having emptied of the mushy goo I set about making a few holes in the bottom of the planters that I need to use. It wasn’t as easy as I would have thought but I had put some thick gloves to protect my hands, and set about the job in hand, how hard could it be?
I heard our door bell chime loudly through the open kitchen door. Steve had ordered a new Bar-b-que to replace the old wrecked one, from Amazon and had told me to watch out for the van and man since there was an email declaring that the item was out for delivery.
A few steps through our little cottage took me to the front door and I opened it with a clatter, club hammer in one hand and centre punch in the other. The deliver guy took several steps backwards from the step exclaiming “Whoa Mrs, who you expecting, ‘Annibal Lecter or summick”? He had climbed over our front wall (No, there isn’t a front gate) and had set the heavy looking package down on the pathway before I opened the door. I put down my tools and asked him to just stand the box in the hall for me and added “Please” and a smile, since he was still looking at me in a funny way. He suggested that I should stand back because it was heavy but hoiked the thing up and stood it just inside the front door, I had to squeeze around it to go to sign for the delivery, I scribbled an H and a scrawly L but he didn’t notice and nobody can read those things anyway.
Not more than a few moments after I had got back to my gardening chores, a regular workman that we use for odd household problems, bowled in through the garage at the back into the garden where he found me sitting on a plastic stool, still bearing the same tools that had given the delivery guy such a start. Just one step back this time, because this man had known me for a number of years. “Jesus Daphne, WTF are you doing with a club hammer?
I indicated first to the pot and explained “No draining holes”. Then the centre punch and then the club hammer and a short mime, before saying that I was not aware of any restrictions on girls using tools!
Having put the tools down and stepped toward the kitchen to turn the kettle on to make tea, I turned to see my husband, home early, stepping through the garage and into the mess of pots and plants. He spotted the club hammer lying on the ground and became the third man in half an hour to question my ability to do a simple job for myself.
“What ARE you doing with my club hammer”?
“Well, for a start, think it was my dad’s club hammer, though, due to our marriage, I suppose it could be deemed ‘Our’ club hammer, one of our ‘Worldly goods’”. I went on to say that I did not know that I had to pass a test to use it.
Steve made the holes in the rest of the pots that I indicated, but still giving me a levelling look and later on I told him that I might lay claim to it. It obviously had some magical power, since three normal looking workmen, had all found something new and a little bit scary in me when holding the said tools.
As a bit of a scribbler, I am well aware that poets and writers have long claimed that the pen is mightier that the sword but nobody ever took a few steps back from me when I stood with gel pen in my hand as they had done that day when I brandished my new weapon of choice.
Pen versus Sword
The Pen, so it is said, is mightier than the sword.
Yet ever since this was said, the assertion has been in dispute.
Support is split in the hundreds of cartoons, posters, tee shirts,
mugs and caps.
Sword v Pen
Literally, we all know it to be untrue.
Were the two weapons put to the test.
An arm would be cut off, and the pen would fall from the severed limb.
The hulk holding the sword would claim victory and march off
waving his blood dripping weapon.
The writer would quickly bleed to death.
Pen v Sword
On the other hand, (pardon the pun), intelligent people can write stirring stuff, get themselves lodged in high places, change laws, start rebellions,
and sway those in power and have ignorant, violent monsters locked away.
Wield or Yield
This question still stands. as we see in the school playground,
where the bully can still rule.
Yet very often the bullying is done with words:
Spiteful things said, threats on Facebook and text messages.
Quill or blade can strike with equal cruelty.
An accurate, articulate word or a murderous swing of the sword.
Both decidedly deadly.
