Octavia

La lecture

The Romans, above all else in a person, admired pietas:

The love of your family, the love of your gods, the love of your country. The archetypal example of this is -

- Excuse me, I have to turn off the bath -

Virgil's Aeneas, the hero leaving Troy

Ascanium Anchisenque patrem Teucrosque penatis

commendo sociis et curva valle recondo

Has in his hands his father and his son and his household gods.

I have for-ever been the best of daughters

A comfort to my family, in their times of itch

And from nothing I have created my own implacable faith.

Rule Britannia - yes I believe

And yet:

I know no English word that strikes the silver-fine balance between

Love and responsibility. 

Incidentally

I discovered last weekend that my great granny was sent to a gulag for ten years, for making derogatory remarks about the tsarina's hat.

That was in the days before Heat, you see. 

I was always a nuggets girl, myself

I am walking home from work, head a whirligig of pigdogs and ponycorns, when my frantic tearing mind comes to rest on a mother and son in front of me. She is faded cheerleader pretty; he is fractious, maybe three years old, grizzly heel-dragging that he wants a Happy Meal. 

She stops and towers over him.

'You can't go to McDonalds, Kelsey. Do you know why not?'

Snot agape, he shakes his head no.

'Because you were so naughty that I HAD THEM ALL SHUT DOWN.'

She strides off, straightbacked, and he scurries after her, downcast, with not a whimper of doubt that his Mum could do that. 

Could lie to him. 

Why I have bad teeth

I roll your name about my mouth like fondant, sucking sweet and lascivious licks from the fall, the rise, the fall.