When you climb 2000 feet over Offa’s Dyke, And the western clouds at last make way for the sun, And hill after hill opens up with new distances With each new ridge reached, And vistas of heather, cotton grass and peat hags, Stretch out before, while down below The valleys show meadow and hedgerow, And […]

My best mate’s dad was at Tobruk in 1942, My dad happened to be there too, They both bore arms, but not as brothers, In fact, they were trying to kill each other, Heinrich Hoffman with his gun, And my dad, Rod, in the African sun, But their sons were friends, growing up together, Kicking […]

Private water companies Are supposed to be pragmatic utilities Rather than aquatic futilities, But like lambs to the slaughter We buy all this bottled mineral water And so why then do we do it? Isn’t it snobbery to pay 120 odd p For such a bottle When the wisdom of Aristotle Says such a small […]

Claudio Ranieri’s Football philosophies Spring from an artesian Well being Cartesian, For unlike Jaap Staam, “I tink therefoe I am.”

He was a working class boy from Camberley, Did well at school and went to university, To study for a lucrative career As a mechanical engineer; He travelled down the M4 corridor, Researching west of Heathrow’s engine-roar, Researching what he liked researching best, Looking at steel and all its consequential stress, When it explodes right […]