Labelling Lady Bella.

I was re-reading some old correspondence with the great lost connection earlier. I discovered that it isn’t such a good thing to do because the sun suddenly shines again on the other side of the ice wall, so you can see its radiance but feel none of its heat. And that’s frustrating.

So then I set to wondering whether I might compose a not-so-silly ditty about the object of that connection. I got the rhythm quickly, but the words wouldn’t come. What did come, however, was the realisation that the word ‘label’ is an anagram of Bella.

Ah, now, if I were a proper poet – a celebrated proper poet – I might use that fact to my advantage. It would enable me to be enigmatic, to hide the identity of the connection, so that in a hundred years time some high school student might say:

‘But please, sir, why on earth would he write an ode to a label?’

‘Think on, young Lisa,’ would reply the sagacious old English master, ‘what would you assume if he’d written an ode to a sail?’

‘I dunno.’

‘No? Wouldn’t you recognise the coincidence of ‘sail’ being an anagram of your own name?’

‘Oh, right… Oh come on, sir, that’s just an example of academics making unfounded presumptions on no better evidence than coincidence.’

And I would be standing at the back of the room, tittering and shouting silently as wraiths are wont to do:

‘But this time they’re right!’