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Poetry, bikes, dementia...
Poetry, bikes, dementia...
It’s more than two years since my mother, Sheila Hartman, was attacked by another resident as she lay in bed at her care home, Ridgeway Lodge in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. Sheila – mum – was beaten around her head and body with the curved end of…
First south and west, then north and east, I quarter up the sky.I’m watching for your sickle wings to scythe across my eye. I look, I look, then look again and listen for your scream.But bar the clap of pigeon wings there’s nothing to be…
I’m not a big fan of anniversaries. The ones you want to forget, you remember. The ones you want to remember, you forget. And so it was I found myself wide awake early this morning exactly a year to the hour since my mum, Sheila…
The “words on a line” world premiere Yup, calling it a world premiere may sound hyperbolic. But, technically at least, it happens to be true… So here I am in full flow (rapture the photographer, Fabio Barry, called it) belting out one of the poems…
A little loose. Like a soft toy sewn on where it’s lost it’s stuffing. Magpies showing zero respect You sketched our field with straight line speed. Sent my blood coursing, bounding. The hearts’ pounding now stopped. In a beat. A car I think. A scrape…
One way or another I’ve been writing for a living for more than 40 years – first as a cub newspaper reporter on the Reading Chronicle; then as a journalist and broadcaster for the BBC; and now as a budding poet taught for the past…
Union flags and bunting. The Kings Head. A telly on the wall And a row of mugs Raising glasses. Bottoms up, no shilling (coronation bitter £4 a pint) But press ganged by the Daily Mail All the same. Toasting two crowns. Heads of state wearing…
Ring rolling in a Bedfordshire field. Breaking up the heavy clodsAnd leverets. Blind to the danger. I stopped at first. Got down from the tractorTo shoo and scatter. At first. Too many of the sods Harrowing. The clatterFlint on iron drowning out the sound. What now in the…
Tying up loose ends, you saidAll crow’s feet and beak. A confiding birdPerched by your desk peckingAt the keyboard when I walked in. That smile still startles I swear it’s youSpin sad to find myself window shopping for one not two. The harvest of a…
In the week that BBC reporters are told to be more “sweaty and dirty” to earn the trust of viewers, Not the 8.30 News reports live from the gym. A Roald Dahl-inspired revisionist history edition in which we give Putin the magic finger, tell Brexiters…
In a week that saw the Americans shoot down several more Chinese spy balloons over the United States, RAF fighter ace, Sir Keir “Biggles” Starmer, attempts to shoot down a number of bloated blimps flying in UK airspace. Plus the former (In)Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab,…
With the appointment of Grant Shapps as Minister for Energy Security what could possibly go wrong? Turns out quite a bit… On the Internet’s slowest growing satirical skit thingy this week, a bull called Boris who spends his time sketching his namesake from cow pats.…