THE OVERNIGHT BATTLE FOR THE DUVET

We fought for the duvet and my wife's the victor 

It's wrapped around her like a boa constrictor.

WAKING UP DEAD ON SIX

I woke up dead on six.

If I'd woken at five,

I might still be alive. 👻

TIME TRICKS

Time ticks so that we do not have to keep a count of our experiences

Time tocks to show us that one thing must follow another

Time stops everything from happening all at once

Time tricks us into believing that.

SOME TUNES AND A DIP

Tuesday arrives apologising for Monday, much how we might apologise for a boring +1 at a friends party. 

Tuesday has nothing to apologise for. Neither boring nor the life and soul, Tuesday's much more practical. Tuesday will always deliver.

Tuesday's brought some tunes and a dip.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

I was just thinking that if you took all the tea drinkers in the world right now and gathered them all together, do you know what?

...there wouldn't half be a lot of washing up to do!

FIRST CUP OF TEA

My very own bag for life.

MONDAY'S APOLOGY

Monday mumbles an apology as it drags us into the week. We put up with its odd idiosyncrasies because memories of the weekend are still quite fresh but cold. A bit like leftovers from a party. They'll be on the turn by Wednesday but by Friday we'll already be cooking new treats.

USING SILENCE

Silent Sunday sidles up with an absence of traffic noise and people. We should make use of this silence. With no light pollution we can see the stars. Maybe Sunday's silence brings with it a clarity of thought, far from the madding crowds, the only day that's a detached dwelling.

ALL BECAUSE...

First cup of tea: abseiling through the window with a cuppa for my wife, wearing my black roll-neck sweater and black trousers -

all because the lady loves milky tea.

EVERY LITTLE HELPS

Saturday arrives as chilly as a public rebuke. My garden's in the midst of allowing Winter to begin to play hide and seek with its colours. Fallen leaves lie generously across my lawn like chocolate shavings on a rather delicious cake. I refill the bird table. Every little helps.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

"Do not sup where the path may lead, sup instead where there is no path and leave a trail and a fanfare for the common man."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lake and Palmer - probably.

AWAKENING - a haiku

I open my eyes

And the whole world tumbles in.

Blink and you'll miss it.

PUPPY POWER

Friday bounds up to me like a playful puppy eager to start the weekend. I have to remind Friday that while the weekend is very fond of it, it isn't actually part of the weekend. Friday doesn't listen or care, it's little tail flashing left and right.

I guess I should walk it.

METEOROLOGICAL EXACTITUDE

I look at the weather and feel Thursday shrug its shoulders. "Comme ci, comme ça" it might say, taking on the persona of an insouciant Frenchman. But we Brits strive for meteorological exactitude, so I check the Met Office forecast. 

Grey cloud all day.

I shrug my shoulders.

NOTHING

Heading home to our bustling town after being perched on the very edge of the North Yorkshire moors for 4 days. Time moves more slowly up here, not least because Time has to counter steep hills at every winding turn. 

I'll miss the silence. 

Sometimes nothing is all you need.

LURING

From the Goth Festival. Whitby.

A man with a live parrot on his shoulder, or a parrot with a live man on its claws. You can wear any colour as long as its black. Two demons kiss by a novelty rock shop. Crystals, jet and fresh sea air, it lures the Goths out of their lair.

WAXING TIME

Whitby's cobbled streets

Are burnished through time

By the feet of the living dead.

From smugglers at Loggerheads

To Captain Cook's Endeavours - 

All roads must lead to today.

These cobbles, such printing presses of history,

Ultimately guide me

Into the Jet Age.

TATTERED CONFUSION

My garden looks raggedy, midway through the tattered confusion of autumn. A season of promises. What has gone before will come again. It's hard to believe when we scan our shabby shrubs and patchy plants, but as the Earth tilts slightly on its axis it gives us all a knowing wink.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

The first cup is the deepest.

SEASONAL MARRIAGE

Autumn and Winter are married. Leaf confetti continues to fall in celebration. Poor Summer. How must it be feeling? Dumped for a younger model. Spring catches the bouquet, already plotting to steal Winter, as this seasonal love rectangle slices into yet another wedding cake.

CLOCKS BACK

We've had an extra hour in bed 

Or so the theory goes,

But I awoke an hour ahead

I missed out, I suppose.

ALPHABET DAY

A new day

B eckons

C horuses

D eliver

E minent

F elicitations

G reat

H ope

I n

J ust 

K nowing

L ife

M eans 

N umerous

O ases

P ausing

Q uiet

R eflection

S imple

T reats

U ltimate

V iability

W ondering

X pectation *

Y ielding

Z zz's

* (ok I cheated)

FIRST CUP OF TEA

later than normal; I'm sipping my first when I'd normally be sipping my second or third, and I fear it may upset the space-time teaquilibrium.

TIME'S MENU

What food does Time serve?

Hours d'oeuvres, minute servings, leaving me wanting seconds.

TEA PAINTING

First cup of tea: today's tea memories are painted from my 'chipped mug' period.

TRICKS OF TIME

My bedroom clock

It ticks then tocks,

Though maybe it tocks then ticks.

One follows the other

Like star-crossed lovers

Parted by Time's endless tricks.

SOFT FOCUS

Misty rainy clings in confusion to my old town. It doesn't know whether to hang around in the air or to fall upon the ground and polish the pavements with an oily sheen. Consequently, the town is in soft focus, which may be no bad thing. I'm not quite yet ready for my close up.

SUNDAY WORSHIP

My body is a temple

But I've no wish to flatter

I have no congregation

I just pray I don't get fatter.

My body is a temple

I sing Abide With Me

But Time says sing the other one,

Nearer, My God, To Thee.

WHERE IT ENDS AND WHERE IT BEGINS

There must be that one breath

That is our last breath

Before we fall asleep.

There must be that one breath 

That is our last breath

Before we then awake.

WHO CAN PHILOSOPHISE ABOUT TEA?

Camus can but Immanuel Kant.

TINY HOTEL BEDROOM TEACUPS

I feel like a giant

In hotel stays

Their cups are tiny

I have to say 

I feel quite silly 

With their contribution

I wonder if 

They're Lilliputian?

ROUGH

My nightshirt is wrinkled 

It's looking real rough

Then I remember

I sleep in the buff.

Timerise and Timeset

Early in the morning, when you're gently pulled from that deep, perdurable sleep, where concepts of past, present and future are meaningless; that's Timerise.

And when you surrender again late in the same day and are softly guided back to that realm; that's Timeset.

COMFORT GROANS

the comforting creaks from my stairs groan to meet me 

just one of the funny old ways that it greets me

I'm grateful and thankful, they put me at ease,

not least 'cos they mask the old creaks from my knees.

TINY HORSE

I thought I saw a tiny horse

But then to my dismay

I was wrong it was, of course,

Simply far away.

BOBBY CHARLTON GRASS

The grass in my garden looks tired and weary. Having been well used and tramped down over the summer months it looks patchy in places. Leaves have started to litter the lawn and nearly cover some of the bald spots in what I can only assume is the gardens attempt at a comb-over.

MATHS 4 LIFE

Never worry about the number of days you have left.

Just always remember to carry over the one from today.

PUPPY AT PLAY

The New Day leaps onto my duvet with the tumbling enthusiasm of a puppy at play. I am not in a playful mood. I sleepily throw a ball for the New Day to fetch but it remains on the duvet pleading for attention. 

Well, that's it. I'm now going to have to take this New Day for a walk.

THE TIME BETWEEN

I'm woken by the tick of the clock, or it may well have been the tock.

We fall asleep between the two, in that silent part of time which allows us to dream. That space, between the tick and the tock of the clock; well that's where everything happens.

STAGE LIGHTS

Summer Light is slowly edging off the stage and soon its understudy, Winter Light, will take over.  Performances will become shorter and shorter until we reach the darkest equinox, where the understudy will once more hand back the role.

BURNING BILLS

I wake up in the morning light

my toes are sticking out the bed

with frost arriving overnight

i turn the heating on with dread

I count the cost of warming feet

I might just stay in bed

I could save money on this heat

I'll burn my bills instead

THE WEARY HOUDINI

My phone alarm's set to 'Old Fashioned Police Siren'

It wakes me each morning from sleeps vast horizon 

I escape from my sheets like a weary Houdini

Not sure if I'm in an old clip from The Sweeney.

BRITTLE

The leaves will soon be brittle as they tighten in a late summer grip. Some will simply drop to form a mourning skirt around their tree. Others will be hoisted by the wind & scattered across the seasons, where they will pay their respects to autumn & winter by feeding a new year.

BUS TIMES TWO TABLE

Only the top deck of the bus can be seen above my garden hedge. I assume the bottom half is following beneath. But I'm not certain. If I can't see it, does it mean it's there? 

I dunno, you wait for the top half of a bus to arrive and both halves arrive at once. Probably.

BORNE ON THE BACKS

The wind makes trees dance as if no one's watching. Traffic lights; more reserved, lightly nod to the sway of the beat of a storm, safe in their knowledge that green follows red, that all this will pass, that the beat will survive, but borne on the backs of insects and leaves.

THE CURRENCY OF TIME

We keep track of the Currency of Time by focusing on the large amount we spend on work and building a life. We forget about the  loose change in a dusty drawer. 

Spend those small amounts doing what you love. Create. Travel. It all adds up.

You can't have fun in a dusty drawer.

THE BOOK OF TIME

Time is a well-thumbed, well-loved book, but there are always pages left to read.

It's not a book to be finished, it's a book to inhabit until you become part of the book and then it's your turn to hand it on to the next generation of readers. This is how the story must go.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

one more mash of the bag

one more splash as I stir

there's no dash, there's no red flag,

this brew can't deter.

TIME AND TRUTH

Time appears to fly

by faster and faster means

it doesn't really try

or so it really seems

from turbo-propped youth

to rocket-ship thunder

we're steered towards truth

and infinite wonder.

WHEN DREAMS GO WRONG

Last night I was dreaming of woodwork

That dream has now left me in dread

I'm stuck and I feel like a right berk

Stark naked in my neighbours shed.

BIT PART PLAYERS

A motorbike can be heard playing the Doppler Effects greatest hit. I wonder where they're going; this person who has no idea they are being written about, no idea they're a bit player in my life, albeit for a few brief seconds?

I wonder whose lives we'll play bit parts in today? 

PANTING

Summer is finally here. Days layered with warmth, unfolded by the dawn like a picnic blanket on a meadow. Where the breeze has to merely tickle the trees to make them laugh. Where pinballs of light bounce off open bedroom windows, which themselves resemble a panting dog's tongue.

TIMPANI

First cup of tea: the tinkling timpani of teaspoons across the nation - our very own kettle drums.

CHORUS LINE

Sunday slowly heaves into view. There's a stillness to sunrise. The early morning checks itself to make sure all was brought safely across from the night. Then it starts. A euphony of birds singing songs of gratitude, but it's far too early for me to be joining a chorus line!

THE SULKING CHILD

It's rather overcast in Shoetown this morning. The uniform cloud promises no rain. I've checked. So there they float, much like a sulking child who can't get its own way, destined to break into a smile once the sun peers through to offer them a treat.

A HAIKU OF CREATIVITY

Listen closely to

Imagination's white-noise 

Creativity.

A CROSS ANT ON A CROISSANT

A cross ant eats a croissant crumb,

not sure what's made him cross.

If now he has to crumbs, succumbed,

I'd like to think he's not!

TIME'S LOOM

Time is the loom

and we are the cloth,

we are weaved into life,

become flames to the moth.

DAD JOKES

1

I told my mate that he'd regret building his new house on that flood plain.

He didn't listen to me but I think it's finally sinking in now.

2

A bloke down the pub was a dedicated Flat-Earther.

Eventually I was able to talk him round.

3

JUST ONE MORE THING...

The sun is making people squint. They look like Columbo right before he says "Just one more thing..." From this the lines on our faces are formed alongside our laughter lines and worry lines. The face makes no distinction between them. Dunno whether to laugh, cry or sunbathe.

EVANESCENCE

The Past is Time mixed with the Present

Memory is that which is yet to dissolve.

LIKE A BIRD ON A WIRE

Saturday looks around at the low clouds and finds little to smile about. The wind is suffering from ennui. It can barely tickle the leaves on the trees. A tiny bird perches on the wire of a telegraph pole, a single note awaiting accompaniment. As are we all as we start our day.

ENOUGH IN THE GARDEN FOR ALL

This mighty fir's protective canopy enables the tiniest of flowers to shelter and thrive around its base. It welcomes one and welcomes all. It knows its ecosystem relies on integrating Nature's gifts. There is enough in the garden for all.

A lesson some of us may have forgotten.

BETWEEN BOTH NOISE AND LIGHT

We live between both noise and light

It's where our hopes and dreams take flight 

We seem to linger in this place 

While chasing life at such a pace.

A CUPPA DONNE WELL

 First cup of tea: 

"Therefore, send not to know

For whom the kettle boils,

It boils for thee."

SATISFACTUAL

White clouds backlit by a rising sun. A curtain raised on another performance. There is a stillness before first light, but then birds sing, and you feel that it's just for you. It's looking like it might be a Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah kind of day. 

Everything is, indeed, statisfactual.

THE SHOETOWN BIRDS SING

Here in Northampton,

The Shoetown birds sing.

Tweeting like us,

About everything.

MARKING TIME

A gentle breeze passes through a tree. A ripple of applause shakes its leaves. Man-made structures stand solid and still. The church, the rooftops, the telegraph poles. 

Yet nature dances with the wind. Bushes tango, treetops foxtrot. Marking growth, keeping time.

AND IN THE END...

First cup of tea: 

broken mugs or china cups

builders glugs, designer sups

it matters not the tea you take

it's equal to the tea you make.

THE LONGEST DAY

Ancient solstice worship

Prayers to a molten sun

Time in a cloak will curse it

And we'll end where we've begun.

MEMORY LOSS IS...

finding an old family photograph

with well-thumbed, ragged edges

that once stood proudly in an ornate frame;

where too much sunlight, and way too much love, 

has started to dissolve the image.

We are those fleeting fragments for those who have sat in sunlight.

FACE IT

Looked in the mirror at 56

And knew the stuff I couldn't fix

Everything was in its place

Except I saw my old dad's face.

HEBDEN BRIDGE

I met a girl from Hebden Bridge

I drove there in my car

I tried it on bedside her fridge

I drove a bridge too far.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

No matter how you take your tea

One lump for your or none for me 

No matter if you dunk a bag

Or let the leaves flow loose and that

It matters not the means of travel

Sup your cup

Let the day unravel.

LEVIATHANS

 Two tall trees. Guardians of the garden. Full of wisdom and sap. Deciduous and evergreen. Yet for a few sun-soaked months they dress alike and watch as the garden slowly colours itself in under a festival of green.

Leviathan's of Time.

We pass barely noticed in their shade.

REMAINS THERE

I threw some words 

up into the sky

as a flock of birds

were passing by

they took two words

from this very poem

it ....... unfinished

..... are still words owing.

LARKINESQUE

Music stopped being fun

In nineteen hundred 

And eighty one.

Between The Jam's 5th LP

And Shaddup Ya Face

By Joe Dolce.

I STILL SEE YOU

i still see you

slowly walking among the hinterlands of your mind

wrestling with phrases and time

i still see you

hidden behind confusions purdah

or when it's briefly lifted by a kindness

i still see you

pleading with watery eyes

i still see you

I still see You

#WorldPoetryDay

A PIGEON MAKES ITS POINT

Tuesday's tune; tyres on tarmac. A pigeon plays chicken with traffic. Roadworks shrug as impatient motorists see red at temporary traffic lights. A church bell chimes, goading the queue with the passing of time. Passing of time. The pigeon struts off, having made its point.

DANGER UNEXPLODED PUN

Broken twigs; evidence of last night's gale, scattered around like a feverish end to a game of KerPlunk. Pine cones on the ground. Nature's hand grenades. Waiting for the warmth of the sun in order to explode. 

You could say they pine* for the sun.

(*Danger - unexploded pun)

DISAPPEARING INK

the present becomes the past

with each solitary blink,

and our memories are written

in such disappearing ink.

HOTEL BEDS

we think we're alone, so it's said,

from those who have slept here, before,

yet we lie upon sleep-laundered beds,

an island of dreams meets the shore.

DAD JOKE

Did you hear about the limbo dancer who achieved all of his dreams? 

To be fair, he did set a very low bar.

MEMORY SLIPS

memory slips through

the fingers of the 

hand we are left

grasping grains

where once

we gripped

dunes of

sand

.

ALL OVER IT

I used to hate bridges.

But I'm over them now.

PERMANENT FROWN

Winter shows it still has teeth as it beats a frosty retreat. Monday is very bright for its age, making red bricks glow and shadows more defined. Right here, right now, the world can only be viewed through a squint. Everyone wears a permanent frown - or maybe that's just Monday?

BUTTERFLY DAYS

Sometimes a day is like a midge and simply merges with all the other midges into one amorphous swarm. 

Other days are like butterflies; their colours shining in the sunshine, sucking nectar from every flower they pass, yet all too brief to last.

Aim for butterfly days. 🦋🦋🦋🦋

FINGERS IN TARMAC

Light rain tickles the skin; defying gravity, left hanging around in the air, much like an unanswered question. The brown slush of dead leaves mulched underfoot. Tree roots burst through the tarmac, leaving it open like a jagged tin, sinewy fingers stretching across the path.

NAKED DREAMING

I dream I dream I am sleepwalking 

I just cannot make it stop

I dream I dream I am sleepwalking

Padding naked 'round a shop

I dream I dream I am sleepwalking 

Can I hear a police car coming?

I dream I dream I am sleepwalking

But I'm awake! And now I'm running!

FIRST CUP OF TEA

effectual devotion to the drink

perpetual motion to the think

TIMELY REMINDER

Time itself could never be kinder;

It sent me a letter,

A gentle reminder,

"You'll never get back the Time

it's taken to read these lines."

ALL YOU NEED IS TEA

The Beatles first cup of tea: The long & winding road leads us from yesterday. All you need is love, a teabag, a mug & hot water. Let it be for a while. Get back to it in time. Something in the way you brew makes it all come together. Sip & embark on a magical mystery tour.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Sipping on the top of the day - Otis Redding

LET'S PRETEND

Brightness stretches across town. Far too bright for a Monday. Has someone mixed up Monday with Friday? Nobody wants it this bright at the start of a working week. Monday's been designed to be dull to drive us on to Tuesday.

There's nothing for it. Smile and pretend it's Friday!

IMAGINE THAT?

A heavy fog is slumped across the town. I half expect a whistle-blowing, caped, Victorian policeman to appear from the mist waving his gas lamp. Fog tricks memory. What the eye doesn't see the brain simply creates. When it's foggy we see both reality and fantasy. 

Imagine that?

CONCENTRATED. CONDENSATED.

Dawn shadow plays with rain. Self-lit cars travel on breaking waves of spray. The noise on the main road is like a prolonged hiss from a giant snake or an everlasting puncture. Soon the windows on the buses will steam up with the condensation from the concentration of passengers.

A RIOJA RAINBOW

It's Bin Day today. A hard-drinking neighbour's played Jenga with those empty wine bottles. A huge cardboard box for a huge TV leans boastfully against a wall. The sunlight bounces off the wine bottles. A Rioja rainbow. I wonder if my neighbour found her pot of gold at the end?

A SLIGHT NOD

A single green bottle of beer; alone, forlorn on a wall, has reached the end of its song. A sofa lounges in front of a house. A pigeon picks at something in the road as if the Green Cross Code means little. A man waves. At me? I'm far too British to wave back. So I nod. Slightly.

FLEETING

A lorry hisses, a van grinds its gears as they petulantly come to a halt either side of a crossing. Two men cross in opposite directions. Then the lights change and these four lives; lorry, van, man and man, part their synchronised ways, oblivious to their fleeting connection.

THE PERFECT CRIME

Frumpy clouds in a grumpy sky; like great-aunts that may well tell us off at any moment. My garden tingles with the expectation of Spring but can't quite bring itself to grow. An electric saw cuts through the silence of Sunday and I start plans to commit the perfect crime.

JELLY RINGS

Calmness and clear skies have descended upon the town. The tall trees in my garden now flutter after last night's flailing. I wonder if trees have memory? I wonder when they finally fall could we read their concentric rings and see this year's wobbling like a frightened jelly?!

ROCK-A-BYE TOMASZ

The lull before the storm. As a washing machine gently rocks its load before one final fast spin, so the trees sway as if rocking the famous baby in its famous cradle. There are no signs of impending high winds. We are at Nature's mercy - only Tomasz Schafernaker can save us now!

A FROSTY JIG

The air is so thick with frost I'm convinced it can be sliced up and served. The air is so still I feel like an insect in amber. The air is so brittle that I'm certain I could crack it with a toffee hammer. The air is so close that as I draw breath my insides dance a frosty jig.

RIVERDANCING WITH MYSELF

The flap, crackle & flop as a pigeon lands in a hedge. People are dressed as if they're off to commit a bank heist. Balaclavas for this Winter palava. A man stomps on the ground at a bus stop. He's Riverdancing by himself. The bus doors hiss as they open, commenting on the cold.

LANDING LIGHTS

Life from a hotel window. Newcastle wakes up to a weekend.  The Millennium Bridge is still as laid back as ever. The sky almost looks as if someone from above is trying to roll it fat. Each light. Each speck of brightness. They are the landing lights on the runway for  sunrise.

THE PIONEER

Brick gables blush against the warmth of a salacious sun. The naked dance of a beech tree invokes Spring but provokes Winter as the wind rattles its bones. A well-worn dirt path must have begun life as grass and the single decision to try another way. A pioneer of the local park.

OVERDUE AT THE MEMORY LIBRARY

I borrow all my memories 

Just one is overdue

The day you looked me in the eyes

And told me, "I love you."

FAT BALL

A bird hops, picking at my lawn. I want to yell "Look up at the feeder"! resplendent as it is with a hanging fat ball. But it continues to pick. And hop. And pick again.

Sometimes Life's fat ball hangs right above your head. Look up occasionally. Don't settle for the lawn.

A BREATH SO BRIEF

Sunday taps lightly, gently arriving while no one's looking. It's a crisp start. Appropriately the roads are ready salted with grit. The vapour from the breath of a  passer-by bursts into cloudy existence before its frosty dance quickly disappears. A breath so brief has passed.

INVISIBLE HOUSE

An avenue of bare trees is an arboreal nudist colony. I notice there's far chew much gum stuck to the pavements. Those potholes and speed bumps seem to be negatives of each other. Three men with work tools either wait for a lift or have built the world's first invisible house.

SOMEWHERE

I half expect to see houses blown away, replaced by a yellow brick road, such was the ferocity of last night's storm. But here I am still in a black and white Northampton as a pre-dawn sun fails to turn the world Technicolor. No rainbow over town. But it's there.

Somewhere.

INDIGNANT DRAINS

You can have January in any colour as long as it's grey. Rain continues to fall as a long sigh. Tuesday regains a modicum of self-esteem as people begrudgingly begin to remember its name. Indignant drains gurgle, quite put out being asked to work overtime so soon after Christmas.

TIMELESS RESOLUTION

A day of headaches, resolution and the expectation of change. The sun shines but much like my electric fire it's on flame-setting only. Deep underground a few buds and bulbs will twitch with the expectation of Spring. 

Once more, Nature's New Year's resolution is timeless.