Last night (having toyed with Odes 1.37 in my head for most of the day), I decided that it would be a good idea to cast Maggie Thatcher as Cleopatra. Consequently I was doing internet research about Maggie last night and got so interested, that I didn't go to bed til two this morning. Love her or hate her, Maggie is, like Cleopatra was, an absolutely remarkable woman; OK, so Maggie didn't poison herself with an Asp, but she did take the honourable way out after a long career of high and low spots. After this poem has brewed for a while I might even put it up to share.

I didn't get to meet the Oxford Poetry Stanza Rep because I wanted to meet earlier and in the event, she, having played the Good Samaritan to a lady in distress earlier in the day, was running late, so we had a longish chat on the phone instead. Maybe I'm fated not to meet anyone from the poetry scene in Oxford, except the ones who were Far From the Maddening Crowd the other night and whom I hope to meet up with again over the weekend at the St. Anne's Conference.

For some reason I've been moved to start a poem about a mythical Goth figure today, inspired by Horace's witch, Canidia in the Epodes, but more of that later.

Oh, and tonight's research with the Bulgarian Professor went very well and we've decided we might have to do some follow up.