Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

It was Betterton Street, Covent Garden in the snowy winter of 1968-1969. In the tiny launderette almost opposite the Poetry Café three young girls were chatting as their washing tumbled in Bendix machines as large as themselves.

Snow White was the most bejewelled, being the crowned queen of Austrowulfia. Sitting near her were Little Red Riding Hood and Alice in Wonderland. Riding was showing the scars on her forearms inflicted by the Big Bad Wolf of the Black Forest.

Alice in Wonderland said mystically that the cure for such interspecies violence was the seven of spades or swords. “The tarot pack can help you dear. It is feudal metaphysical transcendence.”

Snow White said brusquely “you sure that you didn't inflict those wounds on yourself, Riding? Are you a complex suicidal person?”

“No more than you! Certainly not! And I don't have to sleep with the seven dwarfs to keep my throne!” Riding was angry at herself, for she knew that the possessive rapistic wolf was a definite part of her daily phantasy. Alice said “It's all malice in blunderland now – the latest trends and social patterns.” Alice was a sociological participant observer who had an aversion or allergy to alcohol and ice cream.

All three yawned as Charles Dickens, the iconic idol, walked in with his bag of washing and studiously ignored the three shrews.

Alice elbowed Riding in the ribs, winked and said “That's a millionaire – even his flies are undone.” They both guffawed and Dickens stared at them, not amused, like Queen Victoria.

“Time for a smoke” said Snow White, and she pulled out a 20-pack of cancer sticks. They were Marlborough Lights. Snow White loved the tall lean cowboy in the television commercial. As she puffed away oblivious of her companions, they and Dickens coughed and spluttered.

“May I have one of them, Miss?” politely enquired superstar Dickens. This was a most unbritish request in any walk of life. Riding and Alice took a breath of fresh air at the door.

Soon four washloads spun around in the Bendixes. The four were all famous. That meant they were neither alive nor dead. Riding turned on her pocket radio - the one o'clock news. A Russian submarine with all aboard had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean. The bank rate rose by half a percent. Toxic mercury had been found in supermarket tinned tuna. None of the four got emotional about these news stories.

Charles Dickens opened the Bendix as it stopped, and removed a dozen items of lingerie. The three shrews stared at him. Was he extraterrestrial? He grinned, pointed at the underwear and announced “my wife's!” The three shrews giggled. They could imagine him despite his beard being a tranny.

Ho-hum. The tedium buried their vivacity on Betterton St, WC1.

Charles Dickens pulled out a Czech-English dictionary and started to memorize it. His washing could wait – he was thinking of emigrating to Prague to escape from the clamour of the glamour that surrounded his name. What was he doing in the year 1969? What were any of us doing?

Academic theory, money, sex, drugs and forcefields account for most but not all of our stasis, our reluctance to move, our existential predicaments. Snow White started to sing “Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go,” and strutted up and down the cluttered tiny launderette. A police siren could be heard wailing in the distance. More tragedy?

Little Red Riding Hood felt the chill and wondered if the death of tragedy would be appropriate and feasible. She was a Christian and iconoclast who thought that wild animals were imperceptibly the causes of tragedy. All the lapses of morality and of consciousness were due to vicious wild beasts, minor queer dragons, and other zoonomic specimens too horrendous to speculate upon. Her upper lip twitched as she fantasized about a grim genocide upon the entire membership of the Animal Liberation Front. At 18 she was in the sixth form of Rodean School for Girls and she was a wilful, formidable young lady – nobody messed with her. Her family were Rudolf Steiner disciples in a cult called Anthroposophy centred in Switzerland. Her father was viciously against all animals even household pets, mice and vagrant insects. Every weekend he hunted with his 12-bore shotgun in the woods, fields, mountains and caves of the Tyrol. Soon Riding would join him.

Alice in Wonderland dreamed lasciviously of erotic fun with that Welsh hunk Tom Jones. Snow White stopped singing that dismal song and bundled her laundry into a large duffle bag. Saying her goodbyes to the two other ladies she asked them to meet her anytime in Tramp's Club near Trafalgar Square.

The wind carrying blizzard snow nearly blew her back inside as she stepped out into Betterton Street. She furiously remembered the Arthur Schopenhauer quote that ladies are too frail to be serious thinkers. It was a good job for him that the Prussian was back in the year 1818. She would have killed him.

Alice ran out onto Endell Street to acquire some confectionery and a lunchtime copy of the Evening Standard. Riding combed her hair with a thick plastic brush. Charles Dickens stuck knickers, bras and camisoles into the spin dryer, dreaming of a big rump steak topped with melted cheese. He feared that he was becoming a glutton, against which his fierce Protestantism rebelled. Since taking that potent alchemical elixir in 1874 he had had eternal youth, thanks to his patron Baron Bulwer-Lytton of Knebworth Hall in Bedfordshire. The scepticism of most people towards his advanced ideas on biochtry and alchemy made him sneer and he refused to discuss such esoteric facts with any oiks, which he deemed casting pearls before swine. Charles was glad that there were classes in society, more than two he hoped, maybe four. Or was that vague idea of four merely Hinduism, a religion in which everyone was a god??

Little Red Riding Hood broke his reverie by giggling about the comic film “Hell at St Trinians” and he found it hard to remember what he had been thinking about. Oh, to be back in his study, surrounded by hot cocoa and textbooks of mathematics - his hobby. In the distance another police siren wailed ominously.