The Jungle Husband versus The Desert Husband

The Jungle Husband

by Stevie Smith

Dearest Evelyn, I often think of you
Out with the guns in the jungle stew
Yesterday I hittapotamus
I put the measurements down for you but they got lost in the fuss
It's not a good thing to drink out here
You know, I've practically given it up dear.
Tomorrow I am going alone a long way
Into the jungle. It is all grey
But green on top
Only sometimes when a tree has fallen
The sun comes down plop, it is quite appalling.
You never want to go in a jungle pool
In the hot sun, it would be the act of a fool
Because it's always full of anacondas, Evelyn, not looking ill-fed
I'll say. So no more now, from your loving husband Wilfred.

I do like this. But then I have always been a Stevie fan.  Many many years ago, Col and I saw the play - Stevie(?) - in Richmond, with Glenda Jackson playing Stevie and Mona Washbourne playing the "lion aunt".

It is a great memory.  The play was so good, so much of the script in Stevie's own words.  Give actors a good script and it is amazing what they can do with it.  I also remember seeing Rebecca at the same playhouse, at much the same time. But the less said about it the better - the actors, Paul Daneman and Hayley Mills among them, did  their best with the script they were given.

So how often it comes back to the words, the power of language.

This poem also reminds me of old times, Col's first years in Saudi before he had married status (we were married, but he was not allowed to have me living there in the first years) and we communicated via letter and a weekly phone call.  No internet then, and phoning wasn't always easy. He was the desert husband. And I am happy to say that he only shot the local fauna with his camera. I must find a suitable photo from those days to head this blog.

And here is a poem I wrote back then just after I was allowed to live out there for half the year (called "Bachelor status", but you had to be married to have that status - no, I can't explain it either), about one of Col's many photos of moray eels.  They look very fierce, but really aren't.  I see those were the days when I worked and wrote on a typewriter too.  Almost pre-history...

AN ODE TO ONE OF THE SHEIK’S PRINTS

by me

A distracting hand in front of the typewriter

Is stroking a moray eel

Large mouth and teeth

Look at me

It’s as if the hand is urging

“There she is.  Go get her, boy!

 A hundred codfish for your fee.”

Is it your pale hand,

O Sheik of Araby?

I can't find the actual photo that inspired the poem. A print of it used to hang on our wall when we lived at Abqaiq Court. We had a dark room there, and I used to be able to make prints! It seems like technology from the dark ages now... yet another bit of pre-history. And the photo from which the print was made was taken, well, gulp, possibly almost 50 years ago, back when it was more acceptable to stroke a moray eel.

And I guess, even back then, if they hadn't liked it they could have simply taken your finger off.