Greetings with a Smile

MDTL is proud to present our very first guest blogger, DarkeRose. Here is her first post -

Say not the struggle nought availeth,
  the labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faint not, nor faileth,
  And as things have been, things remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
  It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
  And, but for you possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
  Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making
  Came, silent flooding in the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
  When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly
  But westward look, the land is bright.
                                   ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.

Greeting the morning with a smile.

We used to have a cheap blue alarm clock which we acquired early in our marriage after we realised that our body clocks were just not doing their job after a late night of partying. It served us well through the years. Only now and then would we fail to wake up to its dulcet tones. On those days I and my better half (worse half on those days) would miraculously find ourselves on our feet with staring eyes and hair on end screaming at each other for not hearing the alarm. Then there would be a mad rush for the loo, sometimes in the wrong direction. While doing the job and going through Femina's tips on how to greet the morning with a smile, I would be interrupted by a pounding on the bathroom door and a voice asking frantically where the sugar was for the tea he was making. Grumblingly I'd crack the door sarcastically asking if this was a hotel or what that he didn’t know where things were kept. Then I would give directions that the sugar was in the cupboard whose keys were in the other cupboard whose keys were in the--------. This exercise was a painfully failing attempt on my behalf to curb the pilfering activities of my maid servant, who invariably when I lost them would hand them to me with a smirk. Hence the continuous change of hiding places. Finally after the keys were found, he would make his way to the kitchen, but not before passing snide remarks on senility and Alzheimers. I would go back to what I was doing hastily. No time to peruse through that article now!

Nowadays we wake up to the ring of a brand new alarm clock, which has come all the way from Disney land, Paris and was presented to us by our son. Its ring in the morning is enough to wake up the dead. Its ring is also a cue for me to cower under the bedclothes as I see my sleeping partner flail his arms searching for the clock and bringing crashing down all the doodahs with the vase of flowers I had placed on the headboard following another mags advice on how to spice up your bedroom life. In the ensuing silence I'm asked, ’Where did you say the old blue clock was?' I mumble something about senility and Alzheimer’s and turn over.