Our pictures from the collection this month were English Folk Tale by John Lawrence and Untitled by Mary Mallinor. (I can't reproduce them here for copyright reasons) The folk tale print included a charming Edwardian-style mermaid with prettily coiled hair and her top well covered. I think she bewitched us as we spent most of the morning talking and writing about mermaids and brushing up on our nautical vocabulary (well do you know what a yardarm actually is?) We read a little of Matthew Arnold's The Forsaken Merman - oh so sad - all those abandoned motherless children. Then to cheer us up we read a splendidly irreverent modern poem which is up on the 'net so I am going to include it here:
My Mermaid
Terry Donovan
I was once in love with a mermaid and she in love with me.
We'd spend all day most afternoons canoodling by the sea.
She was a single mermaid mum with two sons and a daughter
And she really had a struggle to keep her head below the water.
Her husband he'd been such a brute, unloving and so selfish
She said that she was happy when he ran off with a shellfish.
But mermaids, it's unfortunate, and humans can't entwine
And though I loved her I could never ever make her mine.
For us, life with a mermaid can never be complete -
Not enough woman to really love and not enough fish to eat.
But what she had it wasn't bad, fine hair down to her shoulders,
Was pretty as the setting sun and buxom as two boulders.
We really had a lot of fun and I could tell some tales,
Though we were always careful not to tip the scales.
She never came on land, of course. She wasn't land-equipped,
We met where it was shallow and into the sea I slipped.
Our love it was restricted, there were limits on each side
Though we were happy mixing it and going with the tide.
But all good things come to an end, she crossed me off her rota
Cos she had met another man who had an outboard motor.
One day I saw them making woo, a lump came to my throat.
I thought I'd leave them to it so I didn't rock the boat
And now she's just a memory, I'm sad you'll understand,
But I'll not let it get me down. There's more fish on the land. 
Now we have a poem written as a response to this by Segments writer Stephen Parrott
Captured
By Stephen Parrott
At what cost a mermaid for a wife
Better this than a lonely life
But now my life’s all at sea
The truth is I want to be free
A mermaid to love and hold
Many tales have been told
A mermaid all my own
A fishy life that’s home grown
A mermaid loves and holds
Comfort as I grow old
However no children to come
A family life undone
Such a watery tale
Not like a fierce gale
An experience of seduction
Frightening more than an eruption
The fishy woman has stolen my heart
Preventing us from being apart
Oh how I wish for a true woman’s love
One that brings free peace from above
I am now trapped and captured for life.
Next Month - Monday April 4th - our theme will be "Holiday" and we have 2 wonderful pictures by Michael Rothenstein - Cockerel in the Sun and White Boat, Yugoslavia.
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