Hilary Bradt’s Website

Welcome to my blog. Eventually. There’s nothing to read yet because I’m in the throes of moving house (from Bucks to Devon) and am too fraught to write anything interesting. Once I’m settled I expect to be writing about anything that I find thought-provoking, entertaining or moving, and want to share. So to kick off, here’s a poem (triggered by the word ‘moving’ ). There’s more to read and look at if you click the buttons on the left.

THE WARDROBE

By Charlotte Mitchell

My friend had this wardrobe stuck in her narrow hall

waiting for an offspring to come and fetch it.

Squeezing past it into the kitchen, I observed cheerfully,

‘It’ll be so good when it’s gone,

the hall will seem bigger than before,

it will be exciting.’

A few days later I had reason to call

and found an empty hall,

free and commodious.

‘There you are,’ I said, ‘it was worth

having a wardrobe in it for a month or two,

you can appreciate it now, the space, the hall,

you can skip down it, we both can skip down it – ‘

But as I enjoyed myself, I clocked the wardrobe

Skulking in the middle of the sitting-room,

Taking up a different space…

I nearly began my little philosophy again,

but it wasn’t going to work a second time,

not when I saw

my friend’s dark wardrobe-ridden face.

From: Just in Case (Souvenir Press 1991)