This morning the sun is warming the rained-on ground and the green scent of plants is rising in the air.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a person flying a horse on a beach and this description absolutely delights me. It gives me the perfect title for my blog in a week when things that have happened don’t really make great titles. It was one of those weeks which I thought would be summed up well by a photo of Ronnie not quite in shot as he jumps for joy (it was very windy and he kept blowing off course). I have other photos of him completely in the frame where the sky appears beautifully blue, but this one represents for me that wonderful human balance of finding joy when life sprinkles in a few obstacles.
The photo was taken on my birthday during a visit to Rhos-on-Sea for some ice-cream. Being at the coast and eating ice-cream are on my list of fun things I like to do, and birthdays are definitely the kind of days for choosing which fun things you want to do. I was feeling a little under the weather so we planned a simple short stroll after taking a Ronnie photo and before ice-cream perusal. Half our stroll had us remarking on the joy of the feel of sun on skin and half had us laughing as the rain soaked us through. Luckily the ice-cream parlour has comfortable seats and friendly staff so we had plenty of time to enjoy a treat and dry off. Later in the evening we enjoyed a delicious meal out at a local pub and managed to save room for birthday cake as pudding when we got home.
The bits of the week that wouldn’t make such great titles for this week’s blog originate from a couple of medical appointments I have had, including one on my birthday which wasn’t on my list of fun things to do on my special day. And the joy in all of that has been the expertise and kindness of the staff. I was heard to describe a procedure as refreshing when it involved the introduction of saline. There was much laughter when I was told that no one had ever described it in that way before.
So that’s me learning not to be the person who puts up with symptoms that I don’t need to and channelling my dad who always said if there’s a strange noise coming from the car’s engine it isn’t going to fix itself. So here’s me being a grown-up and getting my engine fixed.
And here’s a poem from Magnifying Glass which captures a moment from childhood when I was stung for the first time…
This morning the air brings the rustle of rain soon and the vague scent of vanilla biscuits.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a person holding a book in front of a bookshelf. Indeed it is, and that person is me and the book that I have temporarily removed from its space on the shelf in Waterstones is Welcome to the Museum of a Life published by Black Eyes Publishing UK. And the fact it is written by me, and it is there makes my heart dance a little happy dance.
In my ponderings this week I thought about blue moons, and I found out that maybe the blue moon at the end of May meant there have been forty-two blue moons since I was born. And whether there have or there haven’t this ‘fact’ along with the realisation that I hadn’t got a blue moon poem in amongst my moon poems inspired me to get writing. I donned my ‘Poetry in Business’ t-shirt and started to draft. I rather like the poem that formed in this moment of creativity at my new writing desk and so I will share it here for you my reader/listener…
I have spent a lot of time this week thinking about the helpfulness of staying in the moment. My brother was always wise in telling me not to worry about things that haven’t happened yet, and I always aim to carry this snippet of wisdom with me. It is one of those pieces of advice that is quite handy to tune into when things get busy or overwhelming, and elements of this past week have indeed felt rather full.
It has also been one of those weeks where my energy has often appeared at different times of day. This has meant for example that I have seized the moment to wash my windows at half past nine at night even though regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big fan of getting out of bed and completing the task while still pyjamaed and then enjoying a satisfied ‘job completed, time to get clean’ shower! I guess as my nan used to say: “A change is as good as a rest”.
During a bit of down time, Kath and I went to visit an excellent exhibition at Chester Cathedral called Threads Through the Bible. It was wonderful to see each of the panels displayed there and to just lose myself to the beauty of another person’s work. Afterwards, since we were right there in Chester, I thought I would pop into Waterstones to see if they had stocked my book because it had been a few weeks since I went in to ask if this was a possibility. I was delighted to see it on the shelf and a little disappointed that I hadn’t had the foresight to wear my Poetry In Business t-shirt there for my photo. After all, being a founding member of the group is spurring me on and is nicely mixed in with my promise to myself to be 10% braver. It still makes me chuckle that when I was asked in a podcast interview recently, “Where can people find your books?” I also heard my own echoing question of, “Where can’t people find your books?” and the answer to my question was “Waterstones in Chester” and I recognised this would have been a much better answer to the first question! So, there’s that one rectified for now and I hope whoever buys this copy of my book thoroughly enjoys exploring the poems.
If you like poetry and you haven’t yet been to one of Louise Longson’s Last Saturday events I can highly recommend them. I was a reader there this week and was delighted to be asked to take part. It is one of those events that I love whether I am reading or listening, it is a perfectly timed event at just over an hour long on the last Saturday of each month and it always brings together a good selection of readers. Each of the evenings is themed and this time we were celebrating National Creativity Day. It feels like a treat and a challenge all at once to select poems for a theme and this is the kind of thing that I love to do. Here’s Rapunzel which I shared at the event on Saturday:
RAPUNZEL
Rapunzel: A Fairy tale first published 1812 by the Brothers Grimm in Germany
This morning the air is warm. It carries a hay-like scent and is tinged with floral notes.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a close up of flowers. It is indeed and it is a photo taken this very morning as the rose blooms begin to open for the day.
The Bank Holiday Weekend at the end of May always signals garden time to me. Peering out tentatively during the cold, grey days leading up to the weekend I saw a garden with the features of Sleeping Beauty’s castle – long grass in the borders, brambles weaving their way along the back path, and dandelions making themselves right at home pretty much everywhere. I was eager for sunny days to spur me on. I also realised I hadn’t been spending much time at all out there apart from my visits to the compost bin and to put out the washing every now and again. I appreciate both these things, but they don’t make my heart sing as much as cultivating a good garden space or indeed of sitting outside enjoying the feel of the sunshine. Mind you, I am very proud of my compost making abilities. I think my sense of smell helps here as I can tell when it is in need of an extra helping of cardboard, and when it is in a state of perfect balance. There was a time recently when the worms themselves were celebrating their home by rising up into the lid to greet me when I took down the latest set of peelings. A whole writhing lid full that when I was little would have given me the creeps but now brings a sense of pride and wonder. I thanked them for their good service and took pleasure in the fact that there is a whole ecosystem at work right there based on kitchen waste products making a perfect soil enricher for the future.
My heart jumped for joy on Friday when the sun came out and stayed out and I felt invigorated to make a head start on finding the garden’s shape again. Time spent outside in my own patch has been restorative in many ways… the satisfaction of seeing how our favourite plants have grown, making room for them to flourish without being overshadowed by grasses and the more invasive plants, that sometimes when digging and pulling weeds that’s the only focus for my brain, sitting out in the sunshine with a cup of tea to take in the view.
When I flopped in a chair after my gardening extravaganza I noted that I smelt of rosemary from having been right in underneath a newly flourishing bush to free it from the tangle of grass and some kind of rampant oniony plant. When the oniony plant first appeared in the garden I thought it was lily of the valley. I soon discovered that the two scents couldn’t be further along the spectrum from each other, but it was very pretty so I let it gap fill little knowing that it was planning to take over! It fascinates me to see what likes to creep into all the spaces. Two years ago I planned to tame the ground elder with mint and now have minty roots making their own extensive underground map so that is sort of working out and I do love the smell of it when I excavate the bits that have gone too rogue.
Here’s to sunshine gladdening hearts, and to spaces that bring pleasure.
Here’s A Garden Pond from Welcome to the Museum of a Life. This poem was recently commented positively on when my wife shared it on her ‘Threads’ page. It captures a moment in time when I was little and wandering through someone’s garden only to be fascinated by a pond…
A Garden Pond
I had never seen so many shades of darkness.
Difficult to distinguish
dark, dark brown from burnished black.
I was happy there
staring.
My reflection stared back
rippled.
I wanted to kiss it.
I already knew there were countless shades of green –
Alt text says this week’s photo is a beaver in a muddy puddle. I say it is a capybara sitting in the mud at Chester Zoo. I photographed it during a visit back in 2015 and the photo came to mind this week after a conversation with a wonderful friend.
Part of our conversation centred around the importance of being able to sit with someone when they are in the emotional equivalent of a muddy puddle. I loved the analogy… being alongside the person, acknowledging that it is indeed a swampy place, sitting with their thoughts and feelings for a while without rushing them to get out, without offering to try to solve it… bringing presence not solutions… simply being there with them in that muddy puddle.
I love a metaphor and after our chat I spent some time thinking about the times I have sat in muddy puddles of my own as well as the times I have meandered off my path to sit with others in their puddles. Those puddles have held a lot. Times of pondering, times of deep thinking, time to respect the need to be still for a while, times of silence, time to figure out the feelings and what is needed right now.
And then there’s the joy and refreshment of stepping out, showering off the mud and being back on the path. I think there is also something here about knowing when being in the muddy puddle on your own is helpful and when it would be really good if someone came to just sit there a while with you.
Here’s to sitting in the mud with someone when they need us to. Here’s to all the people who have ever sat with me in my mud. And here’s the first poem I wrote at my new desk. I mentioned it in last week’s blog, and it feels celebratory to share it here now. I love the fact that I love my new desk and that the first poem written while seated at it is a love poem…
This morning the wind is moving things in gentle swirls and beckoning in the drizzle; it brings the scent of rosemary and grass as the birds chatter unseen in the hedges.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a selfie of two people. I say it is me and my sister walking under a storm cloud. We are decorated by ‘thunder bugs’, and both wearing black hoodies. She kindly washed mine for me after the walk and when she handed it back to me later on, I declared, “That’s not mine, mine’s crispy.” And that’s when I learned the difference fabric softener makes to one’s washing! (And a little google of thunder bugs tells me that another name for them is ‘thrips’ and I rather like that so will be adopting that into my language.)
No blog writing took place on Bank Holiday Monday, but as a gentle nod to Singing As The Darkness Lifts, my sister and I went out to smell the air and confidently declared that it smelt of air! She often tells me this when we talk on Mondays, she knows I will have recorded the scent of the air first thing in the morning, and in those conversations she often tells me matter of factly that where she is it just smells of air. Now I too have smelt that very smell alongside her. A long drive home then treated me to time with a much-loved playlist, and, as the sun began to set, the heady smell of rapeseed pollen under a wide sky.
It has been a time of moments recently. Stillness. Patience. A buzzard on a fence post. Applauding a flyover from a heron. A rainbow in a storm. A 5p found on the ground at a motorway service station. That tyre pressure light. Seizing the moment to drink tea on the settees of family and friends. Asking for a drink in a coffee shop by using its advertising tagline to see if the person taking the order laughs.
And a new writing desk. Sometimes I spend too long flicking through my phone, but recently it led to a serendipitous moment when I saw that a friend had a writing desk for sale. Mine was old and faithful, and it always surprised me just how much I could get done in such a small space – so many poems and videos and meetings and essays and coaching sessions. It was originally gifted to me many, many moons ago by a neighbour of my grandparents and has easily fitted into every place I have ever lived. It has been well and truly loved and as it retires I tip my hat to just how well it has served me. And now into service comes a new beauty, with space aplenty. This then reminds me of that time we were asked to bring something to show which was important to us when I first started my coaching training. Being a little nervous at starting something new I had everything ready, but felt the urge to double check before the meeting started. I felt a little bit clumsy and fumbly (and everything was crowded into a small space) and as I reached for the glass paperweight to check that it wasn’t dusty before I shared it with a group of new people, I knocked my hand on my laptop screen and promptly dropped my show and tell object into my glass of water. I do like to be ready for things before they happen, so my heart beat a little bit faster as I dipped my hand in to retrieve it and hurriedly wiped it on my jeans to dry it off. At least that solved the dust problem, I told myself as I took a deep breath and clicked to join the meeting.
I am pretty confident that my readiness will be easier where I now sit so here’s to finding the space we need for the things that bring us joy, and for appreciating the old and the new!
This past week I was keen to find out what kind of poem would be the first to be written at my new desk (and when it would take shape). Pleasingly it was a love poem that flowed. They are quite rare for me and come with a little fanfare and sparkles when they arrive. Whilst thinking about the act of writing poetry ‘Rescuing the Giraffe’ came to mind. I read it this week at Crafty Crows and will also share it here. It’s a poem about finding a giraffe in a crack in the ground after an earthquake. It might also be a poem about writing a poem. It was originally published in an anthology by Yaffle Press after being longlisted for the Yaffle Prize in 2021 and it then went on to be included in my second full collection of poetry Welcome to the Museum of a Life.
This morning the air at home does not smell of sheep. My eyes are bleary and perhaps this means my sense of smell has not yet awakened, but the first thing I am noticing is what’s not there. And that is the scent of sheep in fields on a farm. Having spent the weekend at a lovely B and B just outside Builth Wells in the beautiful countryside maybe it is just my brain reminding me that I am now back home with a new set of memories made.
Alt text says this week’s photo is “two women smiling at the…” and I am guessing it was going to say camera but instead there are those three little dots. So perhaps it is waiting for me to say: the joy of readying for a yarn show, or the thought that this year while Wonderwool Wales celebrated its twentieth anniversary I was celebrating the fact that this was my third time there being with Kath on her stand, or the way you know you are going to find conversations that make you smile when you spend time with people in a showground. I would say it is all of that, and also the recognition that taking things one step at a time brings elements of calm and satisfaction.
The same stand space for each of the three years enables us to be reliably right there for our regular visitors. It also helps me to know which way I am driving the car and which way I need to walk to get to the things I need. It’s a large site and my sense of direction is a little askew at times so knowing where I am going is super reassuring for me! And as I type this I realise how lucky I am that Kath draws up the plan, gets everything ready, and knows how to pack the cars so that it all fits in. I can copy this once I have seen it, but I would struggle to do this from scratch.
We have developed the art of being steady in our set up and we both know that we will be physically tired that evening. We also know there is likely to be a time when it feels like hard work and we need to pause to drink more water and stand still to stretch our backs out before completing the job. Last year I was training to walk up Snowdon and I realise I haven’t been quite so determined with my walking since then. I don’t need another mountain to climb at the moment, but I think I have just reminded myself that my goal could be to walk myself to better fitness that will hold me in good stead for everyday things! If you’ve ever noticed that your favourite jeans feel a little too tight or tying your shoes seems a little bit too much of a bending effort then you will probably empathise!
Being at a yarn show with hundreds of people is a complete contrast to my one-to-one coaching or the times when it’s just me writing poetry, but there is also a lovely cross over with my values of being helpful, listening to people and taking time for reflection. And this week while simply being in a showground I have felt the lovely tingle of tears of happiness in my eyes when recounting moments that have brought me pure joy in my life and listening to other people tell me theirs. I have laughed a lot and remembered to stay in the moment because after all it is the moment that counts. Oh, and I remembered to still myself and say thank you when complimented by a stranger so that I actually got to feel the complete glow of how that feels.
Here’s to finding the ways we laugh with others, supporting those we love and being ourselves in the moment.
Graphene, from my first collection Magnifying Glass, is shining in my mind as a great poem with which to end this blog…for the wonder of celebrating the shine and the marvel of being human.
Graphene
Perhaps, before their pencil, in that building
it was in me – that flat form carbon atom;
hexagonally honeycombed undiscovered and waiting.
And before that, did it come from a star?
Maybe it was once inside you. You are a study in graphene: cleaved graphite, harder than diamond,
This morning the air is filled with the scent of grass and the sound of birdsong. A blue sky is welcoming the day, and promising warmth soon.
Alt text tells me this week’s photo is a road with words painted on it. It is indeed and it is a photo of what I call the country road where the words SLOW/ARAF are painted. I walked to this area yesterday to take a photo for today’s blog, but the words were very faded so I am using a photo which I think I took during my lockdown walks. Slow is a timely reminder for me right now.
Having talked recently about how important it is to balance self-care and to notice what you need, it almost surprised me that I wasn’t listening to myself. (I say ‘almost’ because I definitely heard the whisper of, you need a couple of early nights!And instead of acknowledging the whisper I chose to ignore it. So my thinking went a bit like this… Feeling a bit more tired than usual? Push on through. Ocular migraine? Have some water and then carry on computing. Unmotivated to prepare dinner from scratch? Bung something in the oven and add peas, and oh yes, carrots because that’ll ramp it up towards the five a day.
And the message from the universe came when said carrots were getting peeled. And I was rushing because I just wanted it done because then I could…uh oh! I temporarily mistook my left index finger for a carrot and managed to potato peel its tip. The fact it was THAT finger made me feel a bit wobbly so after I had rinsed it and hidden it under some firmly gripped kitchen roll, I chopped the carrots nice and small so they would be done in the same time as the peas, and then got Kath to pop a plaster on it to seal it back down so I wouldn’t see it. (THAT finger being the finger I once had an ‘axecident’ with.)
In the morning it looked a little sad when I removed the plaster, but I showered and nothing much happened except it was a little sore. Magic healing, I thought until I hit it on the basin when cleaning my teeth. And then the world went a little narrower than usual and much blacker.
Thank goodness for a wife who bounces out of bed on her only lie-in day, a local minor injuries unit and the kind and gentle nurse who helped me clean it up, applied steri-strips, popped a bandage over it, and told me I wasn’t making a fuss.
So this week I will be re-establishing the joy of focusing on one thing at a time. I will also be remembering to pause for stillness when I can hear that I am carrying a whole conversation of thoughts around in my head. I will be taking time to think about what needs setting down, and what it is that I need to pay attention to. And for an easy and quick reminder, I will be binning all the shoulds. They are definitely not helpful with their not good enough, critical tone. I will instead be thinking about my coulds and exploring their potential benefits and how they match with my wants rather than giving myself a hard time.
And if you see me peeling carrots in the future you will probably notice that I am intentionally quite mindful about it. Here’s to the art of zen peeling and listening to what we need.
I do of course have times when I truly revel in the way my mind can ask lots of questions and go off at different tangents in response to each one. So for this week’s poem I am choosing to share again one that I wrote after tidying my desk one evening. During the day I had been coaching and had also reviewed a list of coaching questions. I wanted to organise my workspace and spend some time with my own creative writing to unwind. One of the questions on the papers I was filing away was: ‘What would you like to achieve?’ This question continued to echo in my head after my desk was clear so I used it as the title and set to writing…
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO ACHIEVE?
A gold medal pings into my mind as the question lands between us in the silence. But I can’t say gold medal because I don’t know exactly what I want it for. My mind pictures me standing there at the award ceremony, bowing my head forward a little in readiness for the presentation. The ribbon brushes my hair, and I feel the warmth of the fingers of the woman transferring the medal as her hands knock against my ears. My head is cumbersome. People with cumbersome heads shouldn’t be getting medals. The applause suddenly feels false, and I didn’t even hear the start of it. I need to hear the beginning of the congratulatory clap. I need to be in the moment. I change my wish. I want a gold medal that fits easily over my head. No, I know what I want… I want a head that fits through the gap in a medal ribbon without causing a kerfuffle for the person handling the ceremony. I want it all to look flawless so everyone remembers me standing on that podium being given a medal. Given, that’s an interesting word. Medals are won not given. Not in a tombola, one in a hundred chance kind of way. You earn a medal by setting a goal and working on it. Over and over again until you are the best you can be. There’s that question again, What would you like to achieve?
This morning there is frost on the grass. The chill dampens the scent of primulas, and the air carries elements of their perfume with a mixed in twiggyness.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a person standing in front of a stone pillar. I say it is Kath wrapped in her Nevern Blanket at The Nevern Cross in Pembrokeshire.
I have often been heard to say that the roads might be too busy on Bank Holiday Mondays for road trips, but not this time. This time I asked Kath if she wanted to come on a trip to celebrate her blanket design, and we drove the three-and-a-half-hour journey along the coast road to Nevern.
The roads dizzied my head, the sun shone, and Kath smiled. And it was the perfect road trip. There was a real joy to standing in the churchyard to photograph my wife next to this spectacular 11th Century Cross. I took one hundred photos so that we could be pretty sure that there would be enough to choose from to showcase the way these beautiful carvings have been set down in yarn in this design. I like the one I chose for the main photo for this week’s blog and I also like this one which seems like a special kind of designer’s semaphore.
I had one of those moments last week where I thought I would put off doing something until next time I had the opportunity. Luckily my thoughts stopped me in my tracks and nudged me into thinking how good it would feel to do the thing and know I had done it. I liked the fact that my thoughts were giving me the nod that I could just get on and do the thing. And when I stood in the moment to think about it, I realised it would be the same feeling of being a little bit scary whether I did it this time or next, and therefore it made sense just to crack on and do it. My mission? To pop into a book shop and ask if they would be willing to stock my poetry books. Three things also spurred me on:
Helen O’Neill asking, “Where can people find your poetry?”
My commitment to being 10% braver (thank you Jaz Ampaw Farr).
This lovely feedback from someone who messaged me recently after buying a copy of one of my books… “I picked up ‘Welcome to the Museum of a Life’ today after reading two poems standing in the bookshop! I couldn’t put it down…. The Telford Warehouse poem stopped me completely…”
So this week I am celebrating seizing the moment, the positive role of self-talk and the things and people that spur us on.
And if you would like an additional piece of wisdom here’s a wonderful question that I was introduced to recently by someone I shared thinking time and space with: “What can I not do today?” It’s now one of my favourite early morning questions.
Because this poem was shared this week by Susan Richardson I thought I would share it here too…
This morning I stand under three aeroplane contrails to breathe the freshness of the air. The birds are singing the verses that come after dawn chorus, and somewhere far above me there are astronauts in darkness of the moon.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a bottle of pills and a red envelope. I say it is a pill bottle from the Poetry Pharmacy and that the theme for this particular bottle is ‘Badgered’. I also say I am delighted to see my words unfurled from two of the capsules in this selection. I have been a fan of these ‘prescriptions’ for quite some time and love the variety of bottles on offer so it feels particularly cool to have words included.
This week I was dithering about which poem to record for Poem of the Month for my YouTube channel. Fortunately, April Fool’s Day gave me a much-needed inspirational nudge when Matthew MC Smith put out a pretend call for poems about spoons.
As mentioned in my blog in March 2024, a fever that accompanied a virus back then triggered a dream about me turning into a metal spoon and needing to be plucked back from the centre of the earth. This poem had been lingering in my drafts folder since then and so it seemed like a good time to give it a polish and send it into the world. It was also timely in that I had listened on the same day to the Coach Write podcast conversation I had with Helen O’Neill. In that conversation I talked about the importance of reading poetry aloud during the editing process. This reminded me to begin my editing with this strategy, and I am glad I did because what seemed to work on the page sounded clunky and wrong-ordered when read out loud. As a dream inspired poem about spoons I think it now holds its space in the world, and although I was given the wise advice not to count the likes I did chuckle that there was a moment in time when the poem had 1 view and 1 like giving it a temporary ‘100% of viewers like this poem’ rating. Here’s the link if you want to see if you like such things: THE NIGHT I TURNED TO METAL.
For this week’s blog poem I turn to Brock which was written during a poetry workshop with Clare Shaw and Miriam Darlington where the focus was badgers. Hence the picture I chose for this week’s main photograph. I loved the immersion in badger facts and finding out more about these wonderful creatures, and I loved the space in which to write these particular words.
I choose to share this poem again today even though it has been shared in my blog before because for me it has a gentle nod to my lovely Dad who died peacefully just after midnight on 6th April 2025 and today it feels strange to think that a year has passed since this happened. He is worth all the gentle nods.
This morning the air brings me the notes of new carpet off gassing in a Premier Inn and mixes in essence of chilled seaside town air. A soundtrack of traffic plays like urban waves in the background.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a person holding a book in front of a bookcase. I say it is me visiting the National Poetry Library in London and not being able to resist a photo with my second full collection of poetry Welcome to the Museum of a Life published by Black Eyes Publishing UK. I also say this feels particularly apt given that I am a guest on Helen O’Neill’s Coach Write podcast this week. We had a wonderful chat about coaching, poetry and the journey to having books in the world, and it felt good to be a guest. I like listening to people talk on podcasts and I like being asked to talk too. It also makes me chuckle that the episode will air on the first of April!
The main focus of the visit to London was seeing the Manic Street Preachers headlining at The Royal Albert Hall for Teenage Cancer Trust. It was a fantastic concert opening with Motorcycle Emptiness and ending under a raining down of confetti during If You Tolerate This. That opening song was a moment of absolute tingle for me as I realised I was standing in the now, watching the band perform live, while also watching the original music video from all those years ago projected onto the screen behind them. A wonderful mingling of right now and back then. There was something beautifully pure about this. Later on I felt myself held still during the wonderful performance of This Is Yesterday which is one of my absolute favourite songs, and I don’t think I moved a muscle. There was plenty of time for movement during the set and I loved being surrounded by the energy of others in the crowd, but I do also love the parts where I am standing in the moment relishing the experience.
On the return train journey the following day lines from Roses In The Hospital came to mind when I had my first experience of a rail replacement bus service. If you don’t know that song the words “forever delayed” are repeated! I saw parts of Medway I had never seen before as the coaches we boarded wiggled their way from Gillingham visiting all the stations that the train would have stopped at during what felt like a pretty busy rush hour. Overall I enjoyed revisiting journeys by trains, but am not sure I would have been quite so chilled about the delayed parts if I had been on my own or if I had been timetabled to be at my destination at a specific time!
It was good to get my steps in in the big city and to see the sights. I enjoyed seeing people taking photos of themselves on bridges and with landmarks. I also noticed a particular street where people were pausing by red phone boxes and posing for photographs. Thinking about this and having all those Manic Street Preachers songs echoing in my head brings this poem from my first collection Magnifying Glass to mind…
Phoning Richey Edwards
no landline, no mobile, the call was made from a phone box
Stagnant air moved as I entered
disturbing sour nicotine, old urine.
Dampened cigarette ends lay split open
orange tobacco strands twisting out
like untidy moustache hairs.
Pockets loaded with coins I was ready.
Above staleness another smell rose;
the shelved phonebook, its pages thumbed and flicked.
I was ringing to say happy birthday,
he was called to the phone as if he might know who I was.
We spoke, but I can’t recall the words. I have an echo of a gentle lilt that floats across my mind from time to time.
Sue Finch 