SONNET

It's been quite wintry today. As the crowd of software developers ambled out of the building and headed to The Bull, I thrust my hands into my pockets and took a sharp intake of breath. The lunchtime air was icy cold; a gust of freezing wind swept about the car park, blowing crispy brown leaves around our feet. The developers broke into a purposeful stride and we were off down the High Street.

We do this most weeks, this little trip to The Bull. It's a remarkable exercise in cognitive dissonance: everyone looks forward to it, emails go round at 11:30 with subject lines like Pub at 12? and Bull? and there's a sense of relief when we throw on our coats and head out of the door. However, all that ever happens at this event is a lot of shop-talk (moaning) and comment on how poor the service and food is at the aforementioned establishment. What exactly was there to look forward to?

This is the idea of cognitive dissonance: holding two opposite thoughts in your head at the same time, creating a kind of tension. As Aesop noted, the fox believes the grapes are for him but cannot reach them and so decides that he didn't want them in the first place. Nothing could sum up #LunchWithDevelopers more succinctly, in my opinion.

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On a different note, I wrote a sonnet* today. Perhaps it was the weather that inspired this, perhaps it was something else. I'll leave that mystery open.

The Beautiful Heart

The beautiful heart lies captured and cold,    
Encased in the ice of the lady fair,
It shimmers with light in silver and gold,
Fragility frozen with love's despair.
Once held in the sun, by her lover's hand, 
Once given so freely in warm desire, 
Yet brittle winter, it now understands,
So broken and smashed by the fleeting fire.
She cradles the heart as it pounds within:
Still scarred with the wounds of a love laid bare.
The beautiful heart beneath icy skin,
Her treasure consigned to be frozen there.
O maidens, the heart let more than this be;
For love must require captured hearts be free

*Typically a Shakespearian sonnet had fourteen lines, each line written in iambic pentameter. I'm not a hundred percent sure what that is, so I've just gone for ten syllables in each line, three stanzas with an ABAB rhyming scheme and the final two lines as AA. It's not perfect, but it will do.