Love, Carol Ann Duffy Style

Christopher Plummer said that working with Julie Andrews was like being hit on the head with a Valentine's Card. Now, that's not even a back handed compliment is it?

Anyway, I was reading some Carol Ann Duffy earlier, and I thought I would share her poem Valentine. Julie Andrews could ne'er hope to be so complex...

I might have it read at my wedding.

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Well, they say love is blind!

A male bar headed goose and a female mallard duck appear to have fallen in love at Slimbridge wildfowl park. Apparently they are inseparable and he attacks anything that comes within half a meter of his "mate". Bird experts have said that it is very unlikely they will produce hybrid offspring, but who knows? Very sweet. I just hope they don't end up empty nested.

Do bar headed geese migrate? Will the duck be allowed to go with him if they do? It's all very well to fall in love with someone from another species while at the Wildfowl Park, but can the relationship survive in the real world? I hope all the compromises aren't made by the duck.

The Most Dangerous Question?

I wonder whether what if might be the most dangerous question of all.

3. The Sands of Time Continue to Fall

"Oh but we never got the chance
'Cause the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the music died?"

We did though. Get the chance I guess. Or I did. During our first year at Universities at different sides of the country, me studying Literature and him studying... why don't I remember? A subject which didn't suit him and he didn't stick it out beyond the first year so it's slipping from my memory.

I went to a different university to my boyfriend, and with a good group of girlfriends I gained a lot of confidence back that I'd lost and was really enjoying myself. My boyfriend- not a horrible guy, just very misguided- didn't like this. He was quite controlling. I thought he was a real bastard for a while, but now I guess he was just young and insecure. Anyway, while at university, I found out that he had been cheating on me, for the three years we were together. With a lot of different girls. We had a slow and messy break up.

Meanwhile he and his girlfriend who had gone to university together, so in love were they while filling in the UCAS form, had broken up. He wasn't what she needed and things got really hard for him. I don't know too many details, just bits. This is my side of the story really, I can't speak for anyone else. Though I often try to...

So the summer after my first year at University found him single, and me somewhat single though the situation with my ex was very confusing. I'd had a brief rebound fling and University and though I was finding my feet I still wasn't... 100% myself.

We realised that we'd drifted apart, and spent a lot of time catching up. Going for long walks and talking like we always had. But this time the safety net was taken away I guess. Nothing stopping us now from what by this point had been building up for four years. Lying in a field one day, all sun kissed and ditzy prints he kissed me. And it somehow managed to live up to expectations. Which is impressive, given the four year build up.

But I guess the cracks were there. I wasn't as sniping or sarcastic as before. A year away from home had allowed me to balance out some of my issues. The heartbreak and confusion of his girlfriend had made him more needy and vulnerable. Perhaps we'd grown up at different speeds or in different directions.

The rest of that summer was crazy, last second rail trips to meet the shiny new friends from university. Drunken weekends with old friends. Emotional tug of war with my ex. I ended up forgetting his birthday, not responding correctly when he text me. Fooling myself that it had been a kiss and nothing else. When to me it was more. To him? I think it was more. He didn't answer my calls. Replying to my emails, my messages...

He did get back in touch in the end. In my second year of University he came to visit a friend who studied at the same institution. Could he come and catch up with me? We missed one another. Had fate presented another chance to be seized?

No. I'd met someone else by then. I was in love. Well and truly, like I never had been with him. And the new man loved me back. And it was exhilarating and wonderful. My allegiances- he seemed to want me to make them clear- were with my boyfriend. So no, he couldn't stay the night. No we couldn't cuddle on my bed. It didn't seem right. We had to go back to being friends. More strange lies from him, more sarcasm and cattiness from me.

And then nothing for years. We bumped into one another now and again. Mutual friends, small world. Smiles and do you remembers. But the intensity had gone for me. I can't speak for him.

People grow up, life goes on. I've been with the new boyfriend for nearly five years now. I still wonder why he didn't kiss me when we were sixteen. Save a lot of- what? Hassle? No. Heartbreak, maybe. Would it have though? We still would have grown up and apart. I would always want to have met the boyfriend at university. I wouldn't change that. Maybe I want a defined end so it can be neatly filed away, but life isn't like that.

The letters are gone. The memories fade. For some reason that what-if remains.

2. Eight Miles High and Falling Fast

I climbed up into our attic today to look for the letters that he sent me, but I guess that they've gotten lost in the house moves that I've had since school via university to now. Or maybe I threw them away in an attempt to convince myself that I was as mentally faithful as possible to my ex-boyfriend. Too young to realise that keeping old letters isn't a problem in a secure relationship. Too young too stupid. I wish I still had them.

My email account has a folder for "Important Emails". Bills and the like. Very sensible, but are they really what's important in the long run? Probably not. But memory is transient and not something that you can hold in a letter. That just makes it easier.

So I'm down from the attic, choked with dust, covered in traces of the past and itchy fibre glass with no letters for my trouble. My father asked me (I had to borrow a torch, the light bulb had blown) "Did you find what you were looking for?" I don't know. I didn't find the letters. Have I found what I've been looking for since? Does anyone?

1. Bye Bye Miss American Pie

When I was sixteen I fell in love with my best friend. He was cute, funny and made me smile. He liked me back, and we would send each other old fashioned letters of funny thoughts. He once sent me an email about how much he liked me in rainbow colours with the lyrics of American Pie interspersed with what he was saying. Just to tell me. I don't know if it was like Andrew Lincoln's character in "Love, Actually" (without hope or agenda) but we made each other happy and that seemed to be enough.

He was emotionally unstable, vulnerable... a classic man-child crying out to girls with a need to protect and heal. He was beautiful, serious and playful. His ex had cheated on him. You wouldn't do that right? I was sniping, sarcastic, unsure of my place in the world. Using cynicism to disguise low self esteem. He told me his guy friend had told him to "join the queue, we saw her first". He told bizarre lies to impress... little things. I made spiteful comments to keep people at arms length... challenging. We balanced each other out. The perfect match.

Nothing happened, because I had a boyfriend. And because I was sixteen and hopelessly naive. And besotted. And cheating is a bad thing to do. And you can't break up with a guy for someone who makes you smile because, you know, that might hurt his feelings. And it would mean I was little better than his ex, right?

We almost kissed once. Sat on a bench built into a dry stone wall on a hot, dusty summer's day talking, he put his arms around me and our faces were so close. So very close. Too close to look into each other's eyes. One millimeter more and...

...And we never did. Because he was lovely and wouldn't kiss another boy's girlfriend without her making the move. I was sweet and naive and a good girl, such a good girl. It would be wrong.

Life went on. After a series of casual girlfriends. he met a girl at college and fell in love with her. My boyfriend, older, went to university and still stupidly besotted I got a job to have money to go and visit him every fortnight. We kept in touch on MSN on the rare occasions we were both on but the phone calls dried up, no more platonic letters which poured out our souls. We grew up and moved on.