• Old Fashioned but Post-Modernist
    It was a grey sky winter solstice late afternoon, When our train stopped at Kemble, And a fashionable young man got on, With an old fashioned football scarf Knotted around his neck, Alternate horizontal bars of black and white, The sort of scarf that knew who it supported, But kept its secret secret; No slogans, […]
  • It’s a Difficult Month, November
    It’s a difficult month, November, Sometimes so still and so breathless, With the silent air condensing at sunset, With mists swirling in the hillside hollows, Vapours drifting round the churchyard gravestones, And you think the weather’s in for the week, When on the next afternoon, The wind howls around the eaves, And red sailed clouds […]
  • THE WALTER TULL MEMORIAL
    On the Friday night, I went to a Mods’ reunion, Where Zoot Money sang “Barefootin”, The ideal preparation for the next day’s journey To commemorate the life of a man Whose childhood would have been similarly unshod. Part of my railway journey followed the railway lines He would have taken after taking all that racial […]
  • Red and White Poppies
    When I was a kid, Sitting with my grannie by the fireside back in 1956, She used to tell me how the smouldering bits of soot, Glowing on the fire-back, were really old soldiers, “They never die, Stuart, they only fade away.” And it was only late yesterday, When lighting a fire for the first […]
  • Tommy and a One in Ten Chance
    It was like having two enemies, The Boche and me own side, But at least Jerry didn’t pick just on me, Or treat me any differently from any other Tommy, Jerry just tried to kill us all fair and square – But my mates put me up for every dangerous job spare, And just because […]