Frieda Hughes: On being an Australian poet watching the World Cup final with England fans
In the third installment of her weekly poetry column, Frieda Hughes writes about what it was like to watch the Lionesses lose to Spain with two English friends, surrounded by the healing hum of nature
Two friends up from London watched with bated breath
As the Lionesses lost the World Cup to Spain; twenty-two women
Tore up the pitch in search of a football, fighting for supremacy between penalties
On an Australian Sunday. After which, my hours were fish, dogs,
Chinchillas and snake, it was the weekly changeover of water,
Or sawdust and hay, and the disposal of the digested matter
Desiccating in cage corners. The ferret, freed to play,
Skittered and bounced off the skirting boards;
He backed himself into a corner, his brown-stockinged rubber-legged body
As long as a football sock, the smooth, silky half-moons of his ears
Pinned against his cranium listening to the sound of himself
Following his own footsteps. He was like two of himself;
One was always tripping over the other. Then the week began
With emailed demands for answers, attention, acknowledgement, washing machines
And the preparations for my reading at the Edinburgh Literary Festival – a phrase
That never scans even in free verse; directions, hotel, parking
And planning dinner with friends. Turning on the computer
Was like turning on a perpetual scream, irretrievable chunks of my life
Vanished into the screen. Only when the snowy owl was put away
And the Eurasians were roosting and fed, could I call it the end of a day.
Frieda Hughes is at the Edinburgh Literary Festival on Monday 28 August at 12.30pm talking about GEORGE – A MAGPIE MEMOIR