Snow on ground for several days.

I’m taken back to sixty-three,

when it didn’t melt for months.

No central heating, frost on

inside windows. You’ve heard

the stories. Eventually the council

tried to clear the streets.

Collected as much snow

and ice as they could,

piled it high in a nearby

car park. A mountain range

for us to play and fight in.

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The pub car park

like an ice rink. 

But the Christmas lights! 

Even the bottom end 

of Morpeth over 

the muddy Wansbeck

is transformed; 

the Telford bridge

dazzles the motorist. 

Our grandchild

banged on the window

when she saw

her first snow.  

Her eyes will widen

once more 

when she spies this. 

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Late November, 

early December. 

The blood-spattered dress. 

The shattered lenses. 

Across the years 

same shock and tears. 

Rifle skills into practice. 

Imagine such riches. 

The Communist, the Christian: 

two fame-jealous hitmen. 

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The rain came from

the wrong direction.

That figures.

Compassion is prohibited.

It’s a hate march

if they don’t like

what you’re saying.

The pantomime villains

who would prosecute

King Wenceslas

and the poor man

gathering winter fuel.

From 'snowflake'

to 'extremist' 

in just a few years. 

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What use is poetry in time of war?

Insular England mourned

a much-loved tree felled

with chainsaw by barbarians

in dead of night. A local

politician compared it

to the death of Kennedy.

Meanwhile Russia continued

to bomb Ukraine, now

almost forgotten

amid daily massacres

in Israel and Palestine.

Evil resumed, three eyes

for one. Yet this feels different.

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Thunderous shooting that transcended his era.
Maybe you have to be a certain age.
When they announced it during the match
the crowd of six hundred
barely reacted. No gasps or murmurs.
My son shrugged, apologetic.

I was thirteen in 1966, watching every game
I could on TV, filling in the wall charts.
Never thought we could beat Eusebio’s Portugal,
the team of the tournament. But two goals
...

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They poured out of Haymarket Metro,

streamed up the hill through

the university towards the Start.

How they cheered Sir Mo Farah

warming up, in ominous, oppressive

heat. Mo the spirit

of the London Olympics over

a decade ago, when we celebrated

our country, the Queen descended

with James Bond from a helicopter,

the last time we felt good about ourselves.

The starti...

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I thought I had a fighting chance. A local poem

about a long-lost railway line. But I forgot

that for most folk, especially in Northumberland,

a poem must rhyme. There were some

accidental rhymes there, but not enough, it seems.

Unplaced in a field of six. I even included

some dialect words, but maybe in the wrong order.

I guess they somehow spotted I was a southerner.

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We were born in the same year

at the dawn of the brave new Elizabethan era.

Men-children fussed over by Little Weed,

often collapsing at their own jokes,

cackling, pots rattling, guffawing.  

The strange figure with squeaky voice

they occasionally met in the wood gave

me nightmares. Growing older

we smirked at the druggy connotations.

I saw them as dazed, strung-out...

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Some days he scours the Channel in his boat,

binoculars scanning for hapless migrants

in leaking dinghies; or sits atop

Dover’s white cliffs, keeping sentry

on Britain’s behalf; or barges into

budget hotels, hunting down those

who have evaded his dragnet;

or wipes away the occasional

milkshake, like seagull poo, that has

landed as if from the sky on his jacket.

B...

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I think about Shankly's legendary words,

which he may not even have said:

Some people think football a matter 

of life and death. It's more important than that 

as I lie on the slab, feeling like a stiff

about to be dissected in a TV police thriller,

and hear the orderlies bustling about 

preparing for my procedure

and talking about whether they'll watch

the first Euros ...

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i.m Jox Cox MP

where my brother found a sodden fiver

beside a breakwater and my mother

dried it, spent it on a pair of jeans

for each of us. Riches in those days.

Sealed with A Kiss, Poetry in Motion,

It Might As Well Rain until September

on the jukebox. The train from

Liverpool Street seemed to go on for ever. 

Now driving from Clacton through Frinton

to Wa...

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that he has fat fingers that mean

someone has to squeeze

his toothpaste, so they say.

That he gets enraged when he

has to sign things, and pens leak.

He means well. It’s not his fault

someone had the bright idea

that while we are watching

his coronation we should leap

from our sofas and swear homage.  

It probably wasn’t his wheeze.

It’s not his fault tha...

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Dozens of trains went back and forth daily

to and from the junction in its heyday.

Fifty-five years ago, the last service.

The terminus building still stands,

grand, too grand for just a branch,

but maybe not too high and mighty

for royalty visiting a duke of Northumberland.

Now far more browsers than ever waited

on the platforms throng the old parcels

and waiting r...

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No point in crying, you know why we’re here.

Saw the league tables, smelled blood, descended.

You’re on our list; we can wreck your career.

Don’t try to fool us; we’ve been heads, too.

Educating the underclass? A thankless task.

We got out in time, saw which way the wind blew.

Up all night, checking figures? No matter.

We make facts fit, the one thing we’re good at.

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Their bungalow seemed

to grow out of the ground.

The garden was big enough

to lose himself in.

While grandchildren marched

importantly in and out of sheds,

Dad took me on a tour of his empire

that terminated at the compost bins.

Ran leaf mould through his fingers,

exulting at what he’d created,

the miracle of degradation,

black gold. It’s life that matter...

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The Goons, Bill and Ben,

Hancock’s Half-Hour,

Steptoe & Son,

That Was The Week That Was,

Doctor Who, Blue Peter,

Play For Today, Match of the Day,

Till Death Do Us Part,

Monty Python, Dad’s Army,

Whatever Happened

To The Likely Lads,

Fawlty Towers,

Not The Nine O’Clock News,

Boys From the Black Stuff,

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet,

Yes, Minister, Blackadder,

Det...

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Why was it built?

The line had to take

a one hundred and eighty

degree turn to evade

the Duke of Northumberland’s

estate. The price:

a tunnel, and a viaduct

crossing the Edlingham Burn.

Blast those shooting parties!

No matter: the navvies

set to work. The curve adds

to its Grade II listed beauty.

It appears much shorter

than from below

and closed...

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