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Bournemouth Fan, Alum Bay

Alex Saynor

Monday, January 1st, 2024

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 On this island, is it Saints or Pompey,
what do you say? Don’t ask me, my friend;
I’m a Bournemouth fan from Alum Bay.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 When you look north, from Cowes,
or east, from Ryde, I’m around the headland
at Chilton Chine. No Spithead, Solent:

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 It’s the channel west on sunset tides
from Brightstone Bay to Atlantic skies.
Go on from Newport through Wellow, west.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 We’ll meet at the needles or Cheverton Down,
talk of O’Driscoll, Sealy or Eddie Howe
not Le Tissier, Blake or Peter Crouch.

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 You have your Maersk, labyrinthine docks,
shipping routes to Heligoland Bight
and distant times at Scapa Flow,

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 memorial services on Remembrance Day
to ‘clashes by night…on a darkling plain’
with a sombre salute in Southsea rain.

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 That’s the ‘more that unites and less
that divides’, so if it’s Pompey or Saints
I wonder what you would say

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 if you could somewhow find the time of day
to talk it out by Freshwater Gate
with a Bournemouth fan from Alum Bay.

Notes

A minority voice on Isle of Wight rivalries!

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/bournemouth-fan-alum-bay/