Football Poets

It was a typically dank Remembrance Day,
When I biked out to Lydiard Millicent,
Through Wiltshire lanes and sodden yellow leaves;
I went to see Mr. Arthur Tull, a relation of my mum’s,
Who had a family tree g […]

So the train went past the old brick yard
Where they mixed the mortar with soot
Back in the Robert Tressel days before the Great War,
When Ragged Trousered Philanthropists walked the earth;
And the train went […]

We all know there’s so many schools of thought
That deny that words have any exact meaning,
But I can’t forget Doctor Johnson,
Who on receiving
A lecture from Boswell on the non-existence of matter,
Bruised his […]

When you listen to nightingales in a copse,
Staring at a Constable cloudscape flying high above,
That glows with all the mythology of an English sunset,
While the church tower slips down into an evening mist,
And […]

I was reading about the Spitalfields Museum,
The Museum of Immigration and Diversity,
And its exhibition, “Suitcases and Sanctuary”,
An exhibition that looks at our traditions of migration,
Of incomers leaving the […]

So was it all worthwhile then? Was it all worthwhile?
Spending all that time, travelling on the train?
Was it all worthwhile, waiting in the waiting rooms,
Penning these lines at 4 o’ clock in the morning
On an e […]

So was it all worthwhile then? Was it all worthwhile?
Spending all that time, travelling on the train?
Was it all worthwhile, waiting in the waiting rooms,
Penning these lines at 4 o’ clock in the morning
On an e […]

When you’re out there digging your mum’s garden
And it’s a blue sky March Saturday
And you’re out there Oedipun alone
With all your childhood memories,
After starting the day in Stroud
Reading the parish council […]

Not in my Name

When you’re out there digging your mum’s garden
And it’s a blue sky March Saturday
And you’re out there Oedipun alone
With all your childhood memories,
After starting the day in Stroud […]

We all know about the one about optimists and pessimists
And whether the glass is half full or half empty –
And it all depends on how you look at it,
But you never know just what’s around the corner,
Although e […]

Now I’m not sure if there’s a debate here about determinism and free will,
Or whether there’s just some sort of reflection on 40 years spent going to the match,
That LS Lowery feeling of being lost in a crowd […]

The car broke down at the Groundwell Farm Industrial Estate,
Technology’s triumph over the plashy rural world
Signified by names like Arkwright Road,
Stephenson Road and Hargreaves Road.
It was like reading an o […]

Joint goalies could be Lieutenant Stewart,
Of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,
And his anonymous German pal,
“He toured Britain last year with the Leipzig team and beat Glasgow Celtic 1-0…
We arranged Box […]

In goal, I would place Caedmon,
For if any Viking made a raid upon
His goal with a shoal of longboats,
He would repel them with Anglo-Saxon wit
And make them flit.
At full back, Percy Bysshe Shelley could […]

Come Back Dad
And hide “British History For Boys”
Underneath my pillow while I’m asleep,
As a surprise coming home present.
Come Back Dad
And bring home Mars Bars and eucalyptus sweets
On Thursday pay night […]

Dear Mary, yes it would be bliss,
To eat some sprouts with you in Diss,
That levellers we may be reckoned,
Perhaps we’d better eat some seconds,
But if the points they dare to switch,
We must avoid West […]

Thanks for Gordon Banks and Yashin was smashin’,
(And feline, too; a hint of the animal, as well as madness,
Is appealing in a goalie, don’t you think?)
But the name that I beg is that of Harry Gregg,
Who went bac […]

Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957, and Team Universe
Six years old and I’m in love with the American Dream,
Disney, popcorn, Bugs Bunny jokes and strawberry ice cream,
Bug eyed, chewing Hershey bars, watching movies a […]

Buy George, bye George, by George,
It’s my jubilee too this year,
Fifty years of hopes and fears,
And while you couldn’t call my life
A total exercise in active citizenship,
You couldn’t call it total subje […]

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
All in a shower of rain,
He stepped in a puddle
Right up to his middle
And never went there again;
So he wouldn’t know about
All the ways in which we shout
“Come on Eng […]