[Sylvia Fairley]

My kitchenette’s become a stage,
a space in which I can engage
my skill with ceps and chicory
while honouring Terpsichore.
I don a tutu and discard
my apron, to prepare roulade
and other gastronomic fare
while entrechatting, pieds en l’air.

While rustling up a crepe suzette
I execute a pirouette
and dance pas seul, yet meals for one
don’t quell my craving; when I’m done
I cry into my sauce chasseur
while yearning for a pas de deux.
A plat du jour for two’d enhance
the kitchen where I always dance.

[Martin Parker]

Sylvia,
That is truly lovely. Surely there will be none better.

[Roger Slater]

A watched pot never boils
so instead of watching I
dance a jig on tippy-toes.
It helps the time go by.

And sometimes I have so much fun
the way it makes time fly
that when I go to check the pot
I find it is bone dry.

[Brian Allgar]

Very nice, Sylvia. I love "chicory/Terpsichore"!

[Ann Drysdale]

I dream of whizzing in Vienna’s waltzes,
A weightless penguin-driven shuttlecock;
Of tangos intimate as peristalsis
Belly-to-belly in a languid lock
With a flat-hatted Buenos Airean.
Or booty-bobbing to a reggae beat
With an accommodating Rastafarian.
Sometimes I jive on little twinkling feet,
Whisking my knickers through my partner’s crotch
And yet the people passing in the street,
If they should look, will only get to watch
An old girl doing a flatfooted bop
Around the kitchen with a squidgy mop.

[Jerome Betts]

Darn you, Drysdale, I thought I stood a chance with Tessa as a flyweight and now you come roaring into the ring like a writerly reincarnation of Bruce Woodcock. Absolutely brilliant, as well as rupture-inducingly funny. An inclination, far deeper than J. Corbyn's yesterday, to Lines 3 and 9.

[Ann Drysdale]

If you can hang on till I've perfected me fleckerl, I'll knit you a truss.

[Sylvia Fairley]

Martin and Brian - thanks for your kind words. I've not done the Oldie before, so here's hoping!