HARMONIES

Now we sing tunes and melodies,

For Now is all that we can sing.

The Future and Past add harmonies; the beat, the rhythm, and swing.

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

The snowy ice has gone. This travelling circus packs up overnight. Only faint indents in my lawn tell of a magical visit. My dog sniffs the air. Can he smell its absence? Or maybe greasepaint? Maybe he hears the distance roar of a crowd as the greatest show on earth moves on.

DOMINOS, SNOW AND ICE

Snow arrived late to our shires. To preserve this tardy gift, frost set it in ice. Footsteps sounds like you're biting through a toffee apple. Cars creep to pull away in my street. Centrifugally slow, battling the surrounding ice. Leaving giant blank dominos where no snow fell.

DRIFTING

There's talk of the lack of snow at the corner shop. We all nod sagely that it's cold enough to snow. We look longingly to the door as if snow might be the next customer. Childhood snow drifts shift silently in our memories. We all agree it could snow later and drift slowly away.

BLACK FRIDAY

Black Friday lives up to its name as I open my back door. Something rustles in a leaf pile. Hedgehogs queuing for overnight bargains? There's a uniformity to the blackness. No hint of what's to come. But I feel smug. I've got 100% off darkness, free delivery in an hour.

SCHOOL RUN - 25/11/21 - AM

The winter sun arrives as a lie. A pretence of warmth. Caught in its yellow, watery glow we all happily shimmer in the moment.

This illusion shatters, however, as three boys fall nosily into shadow. It appears they're fighting over a shoe!

WEATHERING TALK

Talk is of the weather at the corner shop. Is it freezing? Will it rain? Is it going to snow at Xmas? None of us know. It's just our way of connecting which grounds us all in our immediate reality. I leave, knowing that we at least exist, if not the long-term forecast for us all.

SHIFTY

Thursday says, to me at least,

"The weekends chances have increased

We're 1 step closer to the start

Of 2 clear days of fun at heart

We're nearly at that time of week

Where joy and laughter reach their peak"

I say to Thursday,

"Silly friend, I'm working all through this weekend!"

SCHOOL RUN - 24/11/21 - AM

3 kids skip in synchronised happiness. A boy hands out gum to eager hands. A teacher nods to each 'Morning Sir' as if he's head-banging to a slow number. The boy, out of gum, finds eager hands gone. He chews alone, surrounded by wrappers.

SILENT STARES

In the corner shop a man asks for cigarettes. The cabinet's rolled up yet the shopkeeper's hand keeps pointing to the wrong ones. The man says "Left, right, up a bit." I'm reminded of the Golden Shot. I laugh and mention it. Silent stares age me. I Bernie The Bolt out of there.

TEA AND THE NOW

In this ever-present present

There's an ever-present pot

Pouring ever-present tea 

That is ever-present hot

In this ever-present present

There's an ever-present brew

In an ever-present present

There is tea for me and you.

SCHOOL RUN - 23/11/21 - AM

The back of my car is jammed with children and packed with gossip. The talk is of Alexa's hair and her new look. They gripe about their French teacher (though they like her hair), just not as much as Alexa's, 'cos Alexa's mum's a stylist.

CARE TO DANCE?

The old lady who lives alone and always smells of cigarettes and perfume buys 3 packets of fags at the corner shop. I get a whiff of pubs/happier times/much singing/laughing and a hint of snatched, youthful indiscretions. Inhaling someone else's memory, I almost ask her to dance.

LINES OF LIFE

I've swam in Time's wide ocean since forever

My hands have paddled in its ebbs and flows

I think they've spent too long in this endeavour

They've gone wrinkly and it's spreading as it goes.

STOLEN, SILENT WORDS

At my back door my breath is stolen by the cold. I see my silent words disappear in puffs of vapour cloud. I wonder what words were taken? Will I need them today? Will I have to use substitute words instead? Do they join giant word clouds in the sky?

I've no Ikea. Such is loaf.

BONKERS OR SCROOGE?

Three houses in our street have Xmas decs in the window. The correct time to decorate is personal but too early and you appear bonkers, too late and you're Scrooge. I count the houses in our street and divide by two. We'll be house number 54 to put up our window decs.  

Not bonkers at all!

STUBBLED TIMES

My stubble's showing

It's got me thinking

Is my hair growing

Or my face shrinking?

BOOSTED

I am now booster vaccinated! 

If you're pro vaccines, it means I now have less chance of hospitalisation and death from COVID.

If you're anti vax - it means I've just had a system update and can now receive Sky Sports through my fillings! 

SCHOOL RUN - 19/11/21 - AM

Children in jeans for Children In Need. Mufti day. 

I once pushed a bed on wheels up the high street, dressed as a panda, helped by a lion, a tiger and a crocodile. All for Children In Need.

Kids don't put the effort in these days!

🐼🦁🐯🐊

SCHOOL RUN - 18/11/21 - AM

The winter sun sells fake warmth. A boy pulls off his detachable school tie. I wonder if he can tie a real tie? We had to. Tiny knot. Huge knot. Long tie. Short tie. I detach myself from this fashion memory. My school ties have long loosened.

THE HOUR OF INFINITE CHOICE

Nocturnal time keeps its secrets. I'm up before even the rumours of morning. A time when all light is artificial and time itself is just a facsimile of the previous hour. I follow pathways, lightbulb to lightbulb, minute by minute getting closer to the hour of infinite choice.

SCHOOL RUN - 17/11/21 - AM

A car with a giant poppy remembers to let me out. A girl smokes as the frailty of the future is released in unrefined smoke rings. Two boys wrestle in the immediacy of the present, but I prefer school fights from the comfort of the past. 

A STRANGELY BRITISH APOLOGY

The corner shop is a hive of activity, carrying out the illusion that nothing changes. The chiller's being restocked. Bread shelves rise with plump new offerings. I feel guilty for taking a 'new' milk from the front. I apologise for taking it. A strangely British apology.

MY OLD STRING VEST - A THREAD

 I owned a string vest

It wore away,

I owned a string vest

Back in the day,

I owned a string vest

I wore it with glee,

I now own the holes

There's nothing to see.

SCHOOL RUN - 16/11/21 - AM

A boy dawdles drinking an energy drink. At a crossing, waves of blazers part a sea of cars. A speeding ambulance elicits giggles then awe. The English teacher shepherds stragglers through a walkie-talkie as he gathers his personal pronouns.

ALL EARS

A distant siren wails that it wants to be anywhere but where it is right now. A baritone lorry and its soprano airbrakes harmonise to a stop. Adult footsteps are heard but not seen. A stuttering scooter spits and says it best when it says nothing at all. I'm all ears for today.

NEWSREEL MEMORIES

A nascent dawn. Shadowy figures pass under flickering streetlight. They come alive like an old newsreel. Their jerky movements fade as they pass into the dark. Was the street replaying old memories? I wait for a horse and cart to appear but the street forgets as the sun rises.

EVOLVING EYEBROWS

 

In a million years time,

When our forefinger has evolved

Into one giant digit from which we tap our phone,

When one hand has evolved into a giant claw

In which to hold it, 

We will raise our one giant unibrow

And wonder why Autocorrect still roams the earth.

HEATHEN LANDS

Our road has on-street parking. It's plump with parked cars. A flotsam fleet, washed in from a working week. They're now stuck until Monday, when high tide and trade winds drags them off our kerbed shore, blowing them to faraway, exotic, heathen lands...like Kettering or Corby.

THE RECONNAISSANCE OF AUTUMN

Something has hitched a ride from a gentle breeze, turning it into something more sinister. An outrider of winter. The leaves curl at this portent. The grass is fearful to grow. Animals make urgent their plans as the reconnaissance of autumn is nearly complete. Change is afoot.

TIME'S BEDSIT

 If Time slept in for just one day

Would we all think in the same way?

Would we all notice missing Time?

Could we all focus? Would we all rhyme?

Simply put, what would we lose

If Time lay in and simply snoozed?

Would we all exit from a nap

In Time's bedsit? In Time's stop-gap?

GLIDING ON GOSSAMER

Two men in hi-vis jackets smoke on a wall. They're inhaling in health and safety. A cat in the road glides across gossamer. November's fooled some brave soul into shorts. The cat glides on. The distant, passing train is more distant, less passing, more distant, less passing...

BLUEPRINTS

The moon whispers with the clouds and briefly appears as a rumour. The black bunting of the wee small hours is away to another display. Light draws feint outlines of a morning. Rough plans of a new day. Blueprints, redprints, yellowprints. The day is primed. It's now up to you.

SCHOOL RUN - 10/11/21 - AM

Two teeny-tiny hitmen carry violin cases up the hill. A group of girls giggle around a phone. A group of boys throw stones at each other. A girl takes tiny puffs on a cigarette and sucks a few minutes from an undecided future. 

WONDERING SMALL

I missed my wander to the corner shop,

I wonder who took my place?

Would they even wonder whose space they were in,

If they knew that's my place in the queue?

Do they wonder at all,

about wondering small?

In a wonderful world,

there is space

for us all.

CURLING AIR

I watch our binmen disappear down the hill, sliding blue recycling boxes left & right in an expert display of bin curling. Some gently bump walls, some jump in surprise. Now these blue boxes hold nothing but air, which strictly speaking should go in green boxes. 

PATHWAY OF POSSIBILITIES

A man in a black suit and white shirt smokes at a bus stop, his black tie is untied around his neck. Perhaps he's the cabaret for the bus stop crowd? Maybe he's off to a funeral of a friend? Maybe he's just not tied his tie? The pathway of possibilities which is people watching.

WHY A CLOCK NEEDS TICKS AND TOCKS

We need the ticks and the tocks

How else would we know when to stop?

A clock that just ticks on a shelf

Is just Time getting caught in itself,

A clock that just tocks for a bit

Is just Time backing up in one hit.

LEGENDS

I wake from dreams of knights and dragons

to find a world alive,

With 1 swish of a trusty curtain

the legend of colour is born,

Magical back to back gardens roll away

before my eyes,

Set between castles on terraced streets,

It may not be a lot,

But it dreams like Camelot

JURASSIC DARK

I lie half-awake in Sunday mornings peculiar stillness. It's so quiet I could be trapped in amber; a prehistoric fly caught in a fleeting moment, the world existing around me. Being on show for eternity is OK, but I'd rather not do it in old pants and a Bob the Builder t-shirt.

DANGEROUS YAWN

 The breaking of wind

The cracking of dawn

Morning has broken

All I've done is yawn.

PAST THE MUSICAL CHAIRS

Time plays Pass the Parcel

and Time plays Musical Chairs,

And we race round and round unwrapping all our cares,

You may not believe

Time plays such silly capers,

But tell me what will be

when we're out of chairs and papers?

SCHOOL RUN 5/11/21 - AM

Cars queue with smokers cough

as they drop off such fertile minds

from deep inside the earnest-sternest, parent-furnace.

Poured into school they're melded and shaped

when 3pm cools they're returned half-awake

as a rework in progress - no less.

PIPE SMOKE

Autumn draws on its pipe and takes stock,

A sweet aroma of unhurried ideas fill the air,

Earth's axis tilts just a smidge;

a squirrel is urged into gathering,

birds hark south,

trees striptease,

and the light rations itself, not certain

when the clouds may part again.

WHERE IS NOW?

We woke up yesterday 

But we all called it Now,

We know Now is today,

Yet both are fine somehow.

When we wake next morning

That will be Now as well,

Why is there no warning

It's Now in which we dwell?

NO REGRETS

My breath vapourises and floats away from me like a regret. A car is wearing a blanket over its windscreen like a giant eyemask. I tiptoe past so as not to wake it up. Two men stand vaping either side of the corner-shop door as if they're the most regretful bouncers in the world.

THE BORDERS OF SLEEP

I don't remember sleep last night

So softly was its touch,

I just remember lying down

And then not really much.

I don't remember sleep last night

I feel new and reborn,

I think I was sleepwalking, though,

I'm naked on my lawn.

SILENCE

 The whirr-click-whoosh of the central heating system

waking from a deep and ancient slumber;

met with a rising descant,

tap-filling-kettle-gurgles

bubble-bubble-tinkle-tinkles

spoon-stirring-tap-taps

boing-clatter-sink-rattle-slurps.

All's quiet on the morning front.

SCHOOL RUN - 2/11/21 - AM

2 boys swap football cards in the playground. I bet they've not got Luton's Ron Futcher. He and his twin brother Paul were all I needed to complete my Panini sticker album from the 77/78 season. 

An incomplete sticker album, stuck in my mind.

CONDENSED MEMORY

I spy condensed milk at the corner shop, surprised it's still on sale. Memories pour back; drizzling it over nan's jelly, replete with satsuma segments. Preceded by tinned ham and tinned salmon. Sunday treats. Everything was tinned back then. It made the memories last longer.

Thinking back again, I believe it was evaporated, not condensed milk. An easy mistake to make, evaporated milk disappears that much faster, I imagine. 

HOW CHANGE COMES

Snowflake so pretty, snowflake so great,

Each one so different, but watch them mutate

Into snow drifts and blizzards, such powerful weather,

Change comes like this, unique yet together.

SORE LOSER

Yesterday's weather was a sore loser, throwing street toys out of its pram. Recycling boxes are tumbled, jumbled dice. Litter is king. Wallflower leaves refuse to dance now the weather's stormed off. Next doors car's missing. I'm fairly certain he's at work, covered in litter.