NO MATTER WHAT I DID, THE SITE KEPT FALSELY REJECTING THE SUBMISSION FOR THIS CHAPTER AS BEING LESS THAN 500 WORDS LONG, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS 504, AND THEN HAD SUBSEQUENT TEXT ADDED TO FIX THE PROBLEM. 

SO TO WIN THE ARGUMENT WITH AN ANNOYING BOT, I AM REPEATING THE LAST PART OF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER. JUST SCAN PAST IT.

“Good evening. I’m Daniel Blackridge,” said the latest poet, “I’ve been writing poetry since I was eighteen years old, and desktop self published a selection of my personal favourites in a book. Since people are generally doing two poems each, I’ve chosen a couple that are about looking back at life. Although the first one, being a little bit cynical, also speculates about stages in life that I haven’t reached yet. It’s titled....

‘What is this Thing called Homework’:

You're born at age zero, and soon your baptised;

And you'll take life easy, until you're surprised,

That legs make you mobile, without help from Mum.

The time to step out of the cradle has come.

No more of the good life. You've had your free ride.

The pram's now discarded, when you go outside.

When you've reached the cookies, by climbing the stool,

Along comes this nightmare the grown-ups call "school."

You're trapped in a large room, with tall desks and chairs;

And there's this new grown-up, and nobody dares

To reach for the freedom they've had for four years:
She lays down the ground rules, and then the air clears.

You live for the lunch breaks and time after Three,
When, just like before, you'll be basically free.

This goes on a few years, and then it gets hard.

That monster called "homework" drags you from the yard.

As every year passes, they add to the load,

And time that went quickly seems now to have slowed.

The H.S.C. drains you, and then you can see

No light at the end of a uni degree.

The money, which then should be rapidly earned,

Is paid into taxes and bills, or else turned

To mortgage repayments, and starting once more

The loop, with the children you know you'll adore.

And then comes the shock, that you're fast growing old;

And if you're unlucky, some illness takes hold.

The pension supports you, if you're still alive;

And if you pass tests, they'll allow you to drive.

So was it all worth it, once you left the cot?

Or could your own parents have spared you a lot,

By not having children, and buying a pet,

Whose hardest endurance is trips to the vet?”

Trudi smiled and moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. He hadn’t overstated the cynicism which must have taken hold the day he’d put pen to the piece of paper that had contained the first draft of that poem. Still, she had to remember that he was a decade behind her, and about two and a half decades behind the average age of most of the other poets she’d suffered through. His rhyming and scanning seemed to be perfect, and he had delivered a rhyming commentary on many stages of a human’s life. Besides that, he was too cute to walk out on,” she thought.

There had been a few snickers of amusement around the room, while Daniel had been reading his poem. The one thing that the others had over him was that most of them had learned their poems by heart, long before stepping up onto the stage. They could make eye contact with the audience, whereas Daniel was looking down at a sheet of paper during his entire performance, in order to read his poem. She could see that he was handsome, but would have liked to see his eyes looking out at her, rather than down at his poetry.

THIS LINE IS INSERTED BECAUSE THE SITE FALSELY COUNTED 504 WORDS AS LESS THAN 500