In the Very Last Month of Two Thousand and Nine

... which will probably be remembered for not a long time.

To important things. Well maybe not actually. carol Ann Duffy has written a complex poem called The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009 which I am afraid has too much variation to really work. It would have been better in a regular form but then again her reply should be "Who's Poet Laureate?" A good opening regarding war in the same spirit as her WW1 poem for Harry Patch and Henry Allingham but then it just becomes a list of Duffy's own frustrations with the world and while I agree with more of them than not, it seems scrappy and undirected. It would have been better to decide on one for each month of the year to come with maybe a "Judas Poem" for this month by way of introduction. In fact maybe that's an idea for me. See if I can do something with the same themes.

There has of course been comment from the usual suspects regarding the apparent hero-worship of Barack Obama -

I BOUGHT A MAGIC GOOSE FROM A JOLLY FARMER.
This goose laid Barack Obama.

I'm not sure that this line is entirely laudatory and may actually be a warning against such idolatry. Whatever it is, it is definitely Nursery Rhyme material.

And now the really exciting bit - for the first time in my life I have beaten a computer at Chess. I'm not sure how it happened and it was with my last non-pawn piece but whatever the scatter gun strategy I am happy. On to level 2.