Two Cute

Colin Herd’s latest collection Click and Collect (Boiler House Press, £10) is as ambitious as it is enjoyable to read. Its subject is consumerism, and how it has colonised our consciousness to the extent that we don’t notice it. In “Two Cute” the poet witnesses multiple birthday celebrations in the same restaurant in on the same evening and wryly questions the possibility of joy in a commercial setting. It was one of those restaurants where everybody crowds around to sing a song about birthdays if it is your birthday. They check your ID. Everybody carries ID over here. We were characterised on the bill as “two cute”.

They don’t sing “Happy Birthday”, because of the copyright, but an approximation of it, the same sentiment. I was wearing a cactus and lobster shirt.

There were three birthdays in our sitting. Three birthdays in the same meal-time at the same restaurant. I’ll give you a second to let the euphoria of that sink in.