Mermaids are fishy but are people too

Keep getting distracted clearing out three-plus years of work emails. Just lost an hour on old personal correspondence, but it was all worth it to find this exchange:

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Subject: RE:
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007
From: Clare
To: A
Hello lovely. Thanks for booking splendour now we just need to get tix!! Lemme know when you need $$. Sorry I didn’t call last night – went to this spoken word/performance poetry thing… so weird. It was in this random surry hills warehouse decked out like a forest, full of people with costumes and fake accents. I thought it would just be middle-aged women reciting poems about mermaids (there was only one!) and dykes shouting about the injustice of menstruation (none!!) but instead it was silent po-faced bitches sliding around in bathtubs and dancing choirs and harp players. ODD. I only had a cup of goon but it sounds like I was rocking acid or something; a Hunter S Thompson night on a Bukowski budget. Humph. Anyway, gotta finish up and get outta here!
Talk soon
xx
C
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From: A
Sent: Friday, 23 March 2007
To: Clare
Subject: RE:

Oh Honey - am in stitches - I love your emails. Maybe your goon was so mediocre it had become a hallucinogen. I knew those silver pillows were really little labs. I hate it when I am right but by the time I tell people it is too damn late - Why God Why?? I am inspired to write a poem about mermaids: Ahem

Mermaids are fishy but are people too
Some of them get grumpy on trips to the zoo
Splash is a movie starring Daryl Hannah
Chopper is a movie with Eric Bana
Fish and not people yet people can be fishy
this is a word meaning a bit mysteryishy

I love you
A

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Subject: RE:
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007
From: clare
To: A
That’s it, you’re coming to the next “token word” evening. I was even considering getting up myself, guess I just wasn’t drunk enough. This is the slowest Friday afternoon I have ever had (that’s a big call). I have been thinking about beer since around 11am. Keep the poems coming – you are a genius.
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From: A
Sent: Friday, 23 March 2007
To: Clare
Subject: RE:

OK:

This is to further whet your appetite for the delicious amber nectar:

Beer - you are not made of frogs
Yet I often drink you in togs
Beer - You are made of hops
I wish they sold you in pet shops
Beer - Sometimes when I spill you I cry
and when I drink many of you, I cannot lie
Beer - When there is is sunshine you are ray
I think I will have a beer bath today.

I am giggling at myself
A