Spoken words, written words, lyrics set to tune, nuances and the unwritten. Words have an ability to touch the naked soul, sometimes coccooning and soothing, sometimes slashing and piercing. Who loaded the alphabet with infinite meaning and power? Time?

I have been lucky to have had attended Bertie's drama and modern poetry classes. Nothing before and nothing since has measured up. I have heard a pin drop and bounce on the floor before it finally found the perfect inertia.

Funnily enough, the word 'word' rolls off my tongue vague, dull and ugly. 'Mot' is no better..frenchifying does not make an ugly word glamorous for a change, ha ha.

To the memory of dreamy days spent studying poetry then!

"Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning."