Hang Out The Flags.
Well hang out the flags, it’s come round again
So as promised I’ll pick up my sparkly pen
And my sparkly notebook with pretty pink pages
And fill them with nuggets of joy that the ages
And aeons of wonder contained in this year
Have bestowed on my heart and my stomach, my dear.
Oh, but where to begin? There is so much to choose!
Remember the time I bought beautiful shoes?
Peanut and ribbon and bursting with promise,
Guaranteed surely to find me Adonis!
These shoes are for dancing and starting a riot,
These shoes aren't demure; they’re not timid or quiet,
They’re meant to bring laughter and life and love
And they suited my soul like a hand suits a glove,
And in them I feel it, life’s fun and life rocks!
Look, here they are – they’re still in the box.
They’re chase me, catch me, fuck me shoes
But given the choice nobody would choose
A past-her-best woman with a bent for the blues
And occasional inflated sense of herself.
Emma, you and your shoes are at home on the shelf.
OK, not the shoes, something else, let me see…
Well, of course there is someone who fills me with glee
On a regular basis, he’s so very funny
And, better yet, thinks I'm an excellent Mummy!
I cannot deny there is goodness in that
But it hardly requires a tip of the hat.
A son loves his mother, it’s how it should be.
No need for you all to congratulate me.
There’s been plenty this year with plenty to say
On the myriad ways I fuck up every day.
It’s been grief upon grief, judgement and scorn.
It’s no wonder I'm feeling so tired and forlorn.
And it doesn't end here, at the end of the year,
It goes on and on and on, don’t you fear,
Draining my soul, it’s really not cool.
My son has been miserable at that school.
And they’re full of themselves, so sure that they’re right,
And every day is a bloody hard fight.
But whatever we do, we are doing our best,
And it all comes to naught for a stain on his vest,
Or a difficult morning or one more sleepless night,
Or we run out the door having barely a bite.
This is life, and it’s hectic, and it’s never enough
Just loving your children and doing life tough.
They don’t want to support us, they want to undo us,
We tick all their boxes, here’s what they've done to us:
They've broken his spirit.
They've broken mine too.
They've come into our home, bugger all I could do.
They've judged us by ‘standards’, they've picked out our
flaws
(Mostly it seems ‘cause we don’t have more drawers :/)
So pardon me darling if I can’t quite muster
The will to look on the last year with some lustre.
I'm not saying there haven’t been moments of beauty
But it simply is not my civic bloody duty
To sing and dance the new year in
When the last one has mostly been miserable as sin.
“Let us dream of better…”
…let
us not.
Let us keep expectations as low as I've got.
I cannot raise my hopes to be dashed any more,
I'm too tired, I'm too sad, I'm too weak, I'm too poor,
I'm too lonely, too weary to keep on trying.
You end your year cheering. I’ll end my year crying.
Oh it’s not that dramatic, it’s not all that bad.
What’s so unusual about a woman who’s sad?
These are my feelings, to which I have a right.
Not a grinch, just a person – whatever the night.
