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 going back, he reckoned, To the 18th century seed drill Tull, good old Jethro. We didn’t discuss […]

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 past the fields and fences Where I once kicked a ball or sat train spotting, Back in those […]

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 fat foot by making it fatter, Through kicking a stone and howling with pain, And shouting in anguish, […]

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 their homes to come and settle here, Raising the questions of just why particular individuals did just that, And just what did they bring […]

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 when you walk down the tow path in May, With the sunlight playing on the water, Just like […]