Beat the crunch

Visited my mother this weekend- given that I'm a woman of a certain age I think we could say my mother is a woman of vast and varied experience. There was only one slightly touchy moment when mother failed to thread a needle at first attempt and I dared to suggest she might have to consider getting glasses. She reacted like Truman Capote's rattlesnakes on amphetamines, hissed "You want to put me in glasses? Isn't it enough that my neck has gone?" and retired to the kitchen where she threw daggers at the wall for half an hour. Well, not exactly but that's what it sounded like.

Later on when calm was restored we sat on the balcony, propped our feet on the window ledge and watched the sea sparkle and shift between our toes. As the papers are full of tips on how to beat the credit crunch and mother has survived a few economic nose-dives in her time I asked for her thoughts on the subject. This cheered her up no end - "Die" she roared, "that's a sure way to beat the crunch."

If death seems a bit radical may I suggest another tactic to make you feel less crunched? Learn some poetry, track down and memorise your favourite poems and recite them as you search for a pair of socks or run for a train. This recommendation is also courtesy of mother because as we watched the waves she reeled off James Elroy Flecker's The Old Ships, 'I have seen old ships like swans asleep, Beyond the village which men call Tyre'

I realised my mother has endless vistas of poetry stored in her head, a personal, mobile library she can call on any time without benefit of batteries or mains electricity. In comparison my head seems very bare and boring, stocked only with a limited selection of cliches. So I've decided stock up on poetry then if the lights do go out in this credit crunch winter I can light a couple of candles and declaim until dawn.