I've been listening to Pandora for the last few days. This is one of those radio stations where it plays songs to you based on you rating songs you've heard. So you start by inputting one artist, and it builds a station around that style. Then it plays you tracks, and you say you like them or not, and it gives you a wider selection. I've been at it 3 days and so far it's tailoring itself quite well, which is good considering my musical tastes stretch from The Dubliners to Iron Maiden via Dr Dre...

I got to thinking today about how I want things to be once I've moved out and changes in my life that I want to make (aside from the major fact of splitting up with Pat, obviously, and things like "Keeping the divorce as civilised and amicable as possible" and "Making sure I spend as much time as possible with Simon".)

I started making a list of things I wanted to change, and then I realised it was reading like a New Year's Resolution list. I've never really bought into the whole New Year thing - to me, all it means is a few weeks of writing the wrong year on documents, and a nice easy drive to work on the morning of 1st January. But a New Life Resolution list - that, I can buy into. So I've made one, and in true sad muppet fashion, I have applied all my experience and training in goal-setting to it and laid it out like a staff development plan ;-)

Some of this might be a bit TMI, so if you don't want to hear about my sex life, then don't ( click here )

OK, it's actually evening.

Update... I have had to private-ise some stuff as Pat is very touchy around confidentiality issues, so here's a bare bones update.

Pat and I are undergoing a trial separation.
We are still living in the same house, because I have promised Simon I will not leave him.
I have moved into the spare bedroom, and Pat has moved his computer stuff into the double bedroom, where he is sleeping (and smoking - which won't be doing his asthma any good at all.) I have retained my separate office downstairs.
Money situation hasn't really changed as I am still supporting the household, seeing as I earn 80% of the household income.
We are still going on holiday next month... I told Pat I would prefer it since otherwise I fear the attentions of the beer-swilling sad sacks who'll be thinking "Fat single mum on her own, bet she's gagging for it, eh lads?"

That's basically it in a nutshell. We have had a couple of absolute screaming matches but (touching wood) it's been all okay and civilised for the last week or so.

And now a poem for Poetry Month.

Timer
Gold survives the fire that's hot enough
to make you ashes in a standard urn.
An envelope of coarse official buff
contains your wedding ring which wouldn't burn.

Dad told me I'd to tell that at St. James's
that the ring should go in the incinerator.
That 'eternity' inscribed with both their names is
his surety they'd be together, 'later'.

I signed for the parcelled clothing as the son,
the cardy, apron, pants, bra, dress -

the clerk phoned down: 6-8-8-3-1?
Has she still her ring on? (Slight pause) Yes!

It's on my warm palm now, your burnished ring!

I feel your ashes, head, arms, breasts, womb, legs,
sift through its circle slowly, like that thing
you used to let me hold to time the eggs.

Tony Harrison

This poem still makes me cry when I get to the end. The voicing is perfect in the transition from reflective, to the indulgent affection for the father's request, the clerk's voice (which I always hear in my head as Sybil Fawlty), to the breakdown at the end where the emotion overtakes the search for the correct name for "that thing". Also worth noting is the change from "mumsy" clothing items in the third stanza to more ageless feminine elements in the last. Add the hourglass theme to the evocation of the body parts and, well, you can't ask for much more from a poem, can you?

I've always loved Harrison since I first read him and having recently picked up a secondhand copy of his Selected Poems edition, I have another in mind to post tomorrow, if I get a chance.