The things you find in an electronic shoebox. I was looking for something about an owl (‘búho’ in Spanish) and came across heaps of unfinished stanzas not about owls. One fragment took me viscerally back to an experience in Meung-sur-Loire in 1999 which I wrote up as a dairy entry: a true story revised today for metre.

Like a Sunday’s child who is born on the thirteenth,
the lovely waitress wafts mixed signals out.
Unfortunately for all, each vagrant breeze
makes diners think she’s bringing them the cheese
or has stepped in Stilton, Camembert or Brie
It gets worse when she explains, ‘C’est moi – it’s me.’

Superbly scrambled eggs with fresh-cut truffle
illuminate why porkers and we scuffle
for delicacies that both our species share
a passion for. The swine think us unfair
in ruling who and whom goes in whose trough.
I hear behind my back a porcine cough.