Toads Re-Revisited

My Dear Princess and Lovely Nieces,

At college I studied the poetry of Philip Larkin. Some of it I liked, some of it not so much. His personality was evident and I sort of liked that he didn't hold back on who he was. But it was also a drawback. Even at the tender age of 16 I could tell that Philip Larkin was an @rsehole.

This was back in the day when we would study the works of misogynists and racists and teachers would just ahem over that part. He's a great English poet, they said but I made a mental note: 

*w@nker*

My favourite poem of his was "An Arundale Tomb", the closest that grumpy old b*stard ever got to being spiritual. In the poem, he muses that, "what will survive of us is love". But adds that this feeling is "almost instinct, almost true".

He couldn't bring himself to believe that we outlive ourselves through love. I can't bring myself to believe that we do not. 

It's that feeling which has got me through this last week or so. Not just a belief but a certain knowledge that we survive our last breath. Nothing else seems plausible to me. But Philip Larkin would call me sentimental, I expect. 

He wrote another pair of poems on the subject of toads. Which were an explicit metaphor for work. In poem one, he complains that the toad of work squats on his life and wonders how he could rid himself of it. 

That poem resonates. A lot of my life has been poisoned by toad-like managers who sucked out my personality and sent me home grumpy, irritable and exhausted. 

But in his poem "Toads Revisited" he explains that we need work to help us on the inevitable path to the grave. "Give me your arm old toad," he proclaims. "Help me down Cemetery Road". 

Cheery.

He also tells us that he enjoys work on account of how he likes having a secretary who calls him "sir". 

*w@nker*

Nevertheless I worked today. I got a call from Jeroen, one of my team mates asking, why I was doing so. 

"I need the routine," I told him. "I need this, this is comforting to me."

I wasn't lying. In recent years I have come to enjoy work. Well, working for Kāinga Ora, anyway. At Kāinga Ora people hug you and tell you to take care of yourself. At Kāinga Ora people dress up as dinosaurs and rampage around the office. At Kāinga Ora, if you work the day after a personal loss, they ask you what the EFF you think you are doing.

"Just don't be nice to me today, okay Jeroen?" I told him. "Don't be weird and don't make it weird by being nice. I just want to work."

Jeroen agreed. And I had a relatively normal day, working from home.

My toad and I have become friends over the past three years. Oh sometimes we have our fallings-out and I've been known to swear at him. But for the most part, he's a reasonable companion. I expect he will help me down Cemetery Road with a friendly ribbit, at some point. 

He will be there, slow and steady. A bastion of stability in a wobbly world.

I will tell him that what will survive of me is love, and I daresay he will roll his froggy eyes at me. But if what I felt from my colleagues today (none of whom call me "sir") is anything to go by, then I am right. 

And he is a *w@nker*.

S.