When we met again after so many years, there was a great deal of 'do you remember?' We talked of many things; of a life that seems now so remote and alien it is as though it never existed.

People say, 'I suppose you got bored with life,' but it wasn't as sudden as that. The seeds are in you and although it may take ten, twenty or forty years, eventually you can do what you wanted to do at the beginning.

Would I have been happier if I'd been able to do what I wanted when I was young? I might have been. I'm not one of those who pretend that because you're poor there's something wonderful about it. I'd love to be rich. There's nothing particularly beautiful about being poor, having the wrong sort of clothes, and not being able to go to the right sort of places. I don't particularly envy rich people but I don't blame them. They try and hang on to their money, and if I had it I'd hang on to it too. Those people who say the rich should share what they've got are talking a lot of my eye and Betty Martin; it's only because they haven't got it they think that way. I wouldn't reckon to share mine around.

It used to remind me of a furniture remover who was packing china and broke a plate. And the owner said, 'Oh dear, that plate was over a hundred years old,' so the fellow said to her, 'Oh was it? Well, it was high time it went then, wasn't it?'

I Loved You before I Ever Knew You
Shakespearian Sonnet
abab, cdcd, efef, gg


I loved you before I ever knew you: I had a premonition of you,
Years before we ever met, I dreamt you would somehow exist,
Even then, I had a revelation I hoped would come fully into view,
Truly, the days were long before you, but how could I not persist?
I knew I’d recognize you by the bright light of your soul, for instance,
The gleam of love within you could betray the words you would express,
Before we spoke, who could have told them fairer from such a distance?
So many thousands of miles we’d trek before we’d know a first caress,
Then moving closer still, what gift of fate drew us then adjacent,
That you could discern with your own ears my love so humbly pled,
And hearing then receive them with a tenderness so renascent?
Who knew that my idea of you, before these words were ever said,
Fulfilled a gift of prophecy that would serve to carry us through?
It’s no less than a wonder how I loved you before you ever knew.

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