Read Diary of a Somebody online

Chapters (30)

Brian:	For goodness’ sake, what a way to break the ice.
	This is all Greek to me. It may sound like treason
	but I cannot make rhyme nor reason of his words.
	I knew I should have paid more attention,
	but at the merest mention of the bard,
	I fear the game is up. Shakespeare sets my teeth
	on edge. It is all too hard.
	I have been hoisted by my own petard.

Question 2: Answer either a. or b.

a. Using quotations from his work, show how Shakespeare’s language still resonates with us today.

b. In what ways is Shakespeare still relevant in the twenty-first century?

Brian:	I am still in shock. For this is the long and short of it;
	I shall be the laughing stock of the class.
	A sorry sight. A foregone conclusion.
	I am under no delusion.
	I should have worn some quotes on my sleeve,
	not my heart. Perhaps I should try the second part –
	or will that, too, give me indigestion?
	2b or not 2b, that is the question.

Question 3: ‘A fool thinks himself to be wise but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.’ Consider Touchstone’s observation in As You Like It in relation to the current predicament in which you find yourself.

Brian:	I wonder whether others can hear
	in the midsummer madness of this examination room,
	this brave new world’s crack of doom
	as my thoughts thunder and race
	on their wild-goose chase for Shakespeare’s words.
	No sooner do they stop to linger there,
	then they vanish into thin air.
	I could more easily catch a cold
	than manage to keep hold of one of his phrases.
	I have reached stasis and I realise now
	this naked truth; my head is as dead
	as a doornail. I know that I am going to fail —
	and thereby, I suppose, hangs this tale.
	[Exit Brian, pursued by despair]

Tuesday April 24th

The Palace of Broken Flowerpots

In the palace of broken flowerpots,

we shall sit upon wine-box thrones,

talking of the weather

amidst abandoned garden gnomes.

We shall contemplate the implements –

the rake, the spade, the hoe –

that we never seem to use.

How expectantly they dangle so!

And this mower might be our chariot,

these mice, our humble courtiers,

see them quartered in the hollows

of four fold-up garden chairs.

These compost bags shall be our bed,

and this life a kind of truth,

star-gazing through the holes

in our punctured palace roof.

In the spirit of Heathcliff, I went out to my shed this evening to write a poem by candlelight. I lasted five minutes. There was a rustling noise coming from the corner and I hastened back to the house. And so here I am, sitting on a flea-bitten sofa, where with one hand trapped beneath a flea-bitten cat, and an old episode of Brother Cadfael playing in the background, I scribble words into a notebook, while exchanging tweets with Liz on my phone.