Yesterday being Remembrance Day

I made a point of remembering

And joined several hundred other rememberers

On the Town Hall Square

Where I bumped into Alec Simister

Who I hadn't seen for ten years

Now there's a man who could wear a bowler hat and rolled umbrella

As well as any city banker, retired guards officer

Or Orange Lodge member

His high cheek bones and straight black hair suggest he could be of the same lineage

As Vlad the Impaler or maybe Chinghis Khan

I was pleased that he remembered me

"I pissed my sides" he said "when I saw you in the paper,

Writing poetry, is that your latest scam?"

He was never one to mince his words.

A man constructed of dinosaur bones

His crushing grip staying on the hand for minutes

Then I drove to Stoke to visit my brother's grave.

It seemed a good thing to do it would have been his birthday today

Our street, which was falling down when we were kids

Is still falling down, the 70s makovers washed away by time

The entries seem to get narrower

But the cobbles, ever more subsided

Are still covered in dogshit

Our local pub Scrimmies, was as full as on any Sunday in my father's day

No miners now but everyone still looks old

Were these the people I went to school with?

I didn't remember them.

And they didn't remember me.

But the Bass tasted just like it used to!