Barry's Hands

Lovely evening with Slant and our old friend, Barry. Barry is far more organised than I am (he actually managed to home-educate his children), but I noticed, as we were talking in the kitchen, that he uses his hand as a memo/notebook, which is what I have done for as long as I can remember. This reminded me of my (pretty disastrous) year as an Education Officer for a certain cultural enterprise in Dublin. I even wrote a little squib, which quotes another old friend chiding me about this habit, on the occasion of my getting this job (which didn't work out needless to say; I was far too dreamy):


My Year As Education Officer

In place of sleeping in late
are words like outreach programme and co-ordinate.

Used to seeing lists on the back of my hand, my friend
warns me: 'You're going to need a very large hand'.

He's right. My hand grows larger
to accommodate all those tasks for the long finger:

so many they barely fit,
while the great thing drags, far too heavy to lift.