At the exit

Jammed in the crush at the disco exit

and pressed against a pert young lady

whose cleavage I'd admired all evening,

I whispered to her how nice her breasts were.

She gave no acknowledgement or reaction

but her friend beside her got very upset -

"How dare you talk about my friend's breasts !

You should be ashamed of yourself, you arsehole !"

"It was meant as a compliment, nothing more.

Just like you've got very nice legs."

"Oh." She huffed and looked away.

The logjam shifted and we squeezed outside

like coloured toothpaste from the tube.

I watched them walk ahead of me

then went my usual own way home.

I hadn't noticed her legs before.

They weren't anything special.

So often the means is more important than the end. Trying to achieve something absorbs our energy and fills our time no matter how trivial the aim. In fact, most ambitions prove trivial in the end, our achievements rejected or excelled by our successors. He's a lucky man who dies knowing his contribution will last. But we need to fill our lives with something and doing the best we can at anything is means and end enough for happiness.

26p

I wrote a travelogue, studded with poems,
infatuation, sense of duty, jokes.
Then spent the next decade revising it
just like them London literary blokes.
At last I was ready to publish but
was the world ready to receive my gem ?
To my astonishment Kindle took it
swear words and all, root and stem.
So I waited in hope for it to flower
and eventually got my due come-uppance.
The payment advice arrived by e-mail -
in old money roughly five and tuppence.