Sheila Charles NO COMMENT
I find, as I’m getting older, compliments are very rare.
Take, as a good example, my next-door neighbour, Clare.
She can’t listen to my radio shows so I lend her my C.Ds.
She returns them with no comment. Sometimes she looks ill-at-ease.
I wonder whether she actually listens. then the other day, guess what?
She gave me the disc. “I laughed,” she said. I tried to recall which show she’d got.
“That tune, Irene Goodnight,” She said. “The words of that song don’t make sense.
I sat there laughing my head off.” I waited, in suspense.
Was she going to compliment ME on my poems?
‘Cos I didn’t write Irene Goodnight!
Somebody else chooses the tunes.
I write ORIGINAL poems. Right!
I waited. Did she laugh at the POEMS?
I was starting to get uptight.
But no. No praise was forthcoming.
She handed me my C.D.
Should I ask, “Were my poems humorous?”
But I refrained. That isn’t me!
That same day I went out for tea
Wearing a pink and red flowery top.
(I’d purchased it at a second hand stall.)
My son laughed. He couldn’t stop.
“Mum, it looks like an advert
For an air – freshener,” he said
“Why don’t you wear that blue one
You wore here last week, instead?”
“Because I have quite a job.
Getting it over my head.”
That’s when it got me thinking,
Don’t you get compliments when you are old?
It seems as though I won’t get one
Until I’m laid out cold!
then someone will say, “Doesn’t she look peaceful.”
(That’s what fol say, I am told!)
maybe at my funeral service
My talents will be extolled.
illustration by ume-nori
