CLASSICAL STARTS TO THE DAY

A dawn chorus of rising engine revs. 2 men jump-starting a vehicle that refuses to jump or start. Their colourful language, music in F minor, flows down the hill with all the plaintive wailing of a great composer. I waltz away, wondering if they need a starting Handel...🤔

LOVE, MEMORY AND TIME TRAVEL

There's me thinking Einstein was so bright and always right

That nothing can go faster than the rushing speed of light

But then I thought of memory and then I thought of you

How our warped drives are linked through space and time

(I always knew).

DID YOU HEAR?

At the corner shop there's talk of the small robotic delivery pods that are new to our town.

"They'll never replace humans" says the owner.

"They can't carry much" adds a man.

"They're creepy looking" says another.

I worry that they all get together and talk about us.

THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD

The wind skips looking for cheeks to sting, a playground rumour with nowhere else to be. The artificial darkness of a town before dawn, trying to be nights of old. A cat who lives for the night saunters past. Morning me and he are the changing of the guard, so the rumour goes.

POLAROID DAYS

My back garden is an outline in this developing story of a new day. I flick a light on and suddenly the outlines are inlines. My lawn has lockdown hair, scruffy but manageable. The negative night slowly turns into a positive, Polaroid of a day. If I blow on it will I speed it up?

GUILT

At the corner shop the abandoned mattress is joined by a pile of clothes. I've seen stranger sights in my ordinary town. I once mistook a sleeping human being in a doorway for discarded rags. I had to stop to check, then walked by like everyone else. Maybe that guilt's returned?

TATTY

A tatty mattress is propped at the side of the corner shop. The only sign of spring in the street. Who dumped it there? When? Why was it left there? Is it keeping the corner shop from falling over? An everyday object, out of place. This will take some thinking. I'll sleep on it.

CHANCES OF TIME

the sundials silent shadow dance

is my favourite waste of time

though cloudy days leaves time to chance

for ticks and tocks to shine.

OLD SECRETS

Flashing lights blink at me from an illuminated high street, as I drive by in the murk of morning. I catch vignettes of normality; kids gathering crisps, an old woman surveying a loaf, and a weary-looking man carrying old secrets in his bag.

BROKEN TIME

Let's smash time like a glass bottle

Let's smash it back to sand

We can take that sand

and pour it through

the hourglass

to measure

time.

FISH FOR CHANGE

 Yesterday, a homeless man and his dog sat outside the entrance to Morrisons. A woman dropped change into the man's bowl and quickly walked way. She unknowingly dropped it in the dog's water bowl. The sight of the homeless man fishing it out still troubles me. So I wrote this.

FISH FOR CHANGE

When those submerged coins are fished right out the water bowl 

Will the sense of shame in which they're dropped have cleansed our soul?

Can we now absolve our sins by first baptising change?

Can we now walk by and feel we're free of guilt and blame?

COLD TALES

Frost is finger-painting delicate cracks on car glass. A woman defrosts hers with a spray. A large man disappears down a dark hill, reappearing under successive streetlights - smaller. 

Stars of The Tale of the Woman Who Could Speed Up Time And The Incredible Shrinking Man!

HUMBLEBRAG

 I'm the atheist

with a God-given talent

the rowdy rebel

always kind and gallant

the driving force

with a pedestrian flow

I'm self-taught and schooled

and it's starting to show

I've been known to lie

and normally that's bad

but for writers to write

be both humble and brag.

SUNNY PORTUGAL

A van mistimed a speed bump and scraped me awake. The kettle rumbles and clicks and I pour myself the thirst of the day. The bag's left steaming on a giant ceramic spoon, a present from 'Sunny Portugal.' It should really be hung on a wall, but then the teabags would slide off!

BOBBING

 Light from the corner shop splashes the pavement, illuminating the detritus of those who've washed up on its shore. Fag stubs, sweet wrappers, a scratch card scratched. Ghost footprints; these Sirens, this flotsam and jetsam, bobbing about on the morning tide of life.

DIVINE FOG

Fog makes streetlamps seem to bow under halos of smudged gold; stick-thin angels with dirty faces and fog-covered feet resting on fallen clouds. A dream sequence for the early-risers, not even a memory for the latecomers. The sun will tidy up and leave no trace of a divine visit.

THE ASHES AND VARICOSE VEINS

The moon seems to be the sky's only fridge magnet as Teflon clouds glide by. The skinny, determined jogger could be the fat, determined jogger I saw last year. At the corner shop the talk is of The Ashes & varicose veins. I nod along in ignorance. Maybe that's why they wear pads?

WARMER DAYS

The sun strains to juice itself a trickle of warmth. A frozen puddle demands I test its thickness. Grass is crunchy. Mud is hard. A child's vapourised breath floats off like a lost balloon. At the corner shop a tattooed man in shorts makes me wonder if warmer days are due...

STREETLIGHTS ON A FROSTY MORNING

Artificial light;

falling onto dancing ice crystals embedded in a tarmacked road,

mining very real sparks of shimmering black.

ROTATIONAL BATTLES

A man's pained expression as he moves slowly up our hill suggests he's battling against the very rotation of the Earth. Two wood pigeons play give us a coo. A child's glove on a wall tells half a story. At the top of the hill both Earth and man decide to call it a draw, for now.

BOILING POINT

Wednesday's eyelids flicker as it dares to dream of daylight. I dream of throwing a party for Locked Down Artists - bring your own muse! The chill of the morning is in stark contrast to my kettle, which reaches boiling point in solidarity with a national mood.

CLOCKWORK WALKS

A man and woman wear matching hi-vis and hers vests. A man walks as if he's in a silent movie. It's a peculiarly British walk, straining against the desire to run and admit to the embarrassment of being late. The clockwork man ticks by as we both briefly star in the same film.

THE JOYFUL COMFORT OF CONSISTENT FAMILIARITY

My street on a hill looks much the same as when the last Victorian builder left it, save for satellite dishes and cars. Inside, we have gadgets and conveniences, but routine is much the same. Hopes/dreams remain the same.

The joyful comfort of consistent familiarity.

STIRRING TIMES

January marches on and leads its silent army away from the Winter Palace. Spring is on a phony-war footing. Summer is both a memory and a hope. Warmth suggests itself from the evergreen clarity of birdsong. Twitches from patches of leaves in the dark; and the seasons are stirred.

STATIC

A slate roof tile lies in pieces by the kerb. Despite tectonic pressure at birth, an errant gust of wind or a loose nail reveals the fragility of its existence. Immovable streetlights are a study in static electricity. I pass a twitching curtain. Can I be static if I'm moving?

SPACE PAINT

A paint-splattered t-shirt

fell out from my laundry,

it's old and it's smelly

and really quite tawdry,

but slowly my eyes spied

the whole universe,

Big Bangs on those paint cans

made galaxies give birth. 

FIRST BOBBINGS

Thursday's line gently sags upon morning's mirrored water. Birdsong brings 1st bobbings of the float. A distant, passing train, wriggles briefly on the hook. Thursday begins to vibrate and reflect. Is today the day we're caught, or returned? Or will we be the one that got away?

RECYCLING XMAS

Someone's forgotten to defrost Wednesday. In an act of possible cannibalism, recycling boxes are stuffed with recycled cardboard. Black plastic bags grip the last of Xmas. We've wrung all the joy that we can from the rubbish. Soon the sound of Binmen Curling will fill the street.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

A man in the corner shop wishes me a Happy New Year. I wish him a Happy New Year. Someone near us thinks we're talking to him so he wishes us both a Happy New Year. We wish him one back. Then the shopkeeper wishes us all a Happy New Year. We all wish him one back. 

Masks, eh?

CONJUGAL VISIT

A sweaty jogger jogs by jogging in a clumsy attempt at conjugating himself. That traffic sign knows only sign language. At the corner shop the talk is how Monday doesn't feel like a Monday, but there's no consensus on what it does feel like. That jogger must've jogged by now.

EXISTENSIAL BREAKING NEWS

My newspaper.

What of the paper upon which it was printed?

How old were the trees from which it was made?

Has the paper been recycled before?

Is my newspaper older than me?

Do past headlines run through its DNA?

Have these breaking views, broken news?

THE POSSIBILITIES OF SOUND AND LIGHT

All possibilities for sound and light lie before me as I sit in awe of a dark and silent world; its black, padded canvas almost dares to be drawn upon.

- with one click -

my first sketch of the day is complete.

25 YEARS OF SUGAR

Though I took my sugar in granules

And she took her sugar in lumps,

Love at first sight became annual

It gets sweeter from years of goosebumps.

STORIES

Let's doodle and scribble across this new year

Let's note what it brings without favour or fear

Let's pen all the stories that we have to tell

Let's read from each other and keep ourselves well.

ANYTHING'S POSSIBLE

This brand new year has that brand new book smell. If it was a car, we'd only take it out when it was dry, on empty roads. If it was an invention, we'd be at the eureka moment. We wouldn't run naked from the bath like Archimedes, but it's a brand new year. Anything's possible!