FIRST CUP OF TEA

Like finding the last Christmas chocolate in a tin full of empty wrappers - a quality treat.

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

Halfway down the stairs I stop

With pause to think, I'm caught,

I'm neither up

I'm neither down

The Grand Old Duke Of Thought.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Perpetual motion for the imagination.

BIN DAY

Don't forget to put your day bins out at this time of year. Collect all your empty and used days - Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day - and secure them in the coloured boxes provided. The bin men will then take them away to be washed, ready to be used again next year.

MIST

brief gossamer mist

picks up its bindle

this transient year

will soon leave its spindle

you'll hear a brief clunk

the rotation of Time

beneath all the singing

of Auld Lang Syne.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 We are a nation of suppers at breakfast time.

VISITING RELATIVES

Fog hangs around like the temporal confusion that exists between now and New Year. Town wears a misty silver skirt and the thinnest of dust sheets. Streetlights are smudged orange glows. Familiar sights disappear into uneasy emptiness.

The sun must be away visiting relatives.

TIME

Time is a magic trick where we levitate just above memory and expectation.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Steam rises from my brew and dances a little jig as I gently blow it away.

CHRISTMAS STAR

I've already forgotten what day of the week it is.

Some of us have just taken part in a Xmas that our younger relatives will fondly remember when we're long gone, just as we do now with our lost loved ones.

We all star in our own Xmas stories. Eventually we play all of the parts.

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE

The fridge is still bulging

But I am not moving 

I'll just be indulging

With leftover choosing.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 Never any leftovers.

CHRISTMAS PASSED

Christmas comes but once a year

joy and fun climb Families Peak;

pull those crackers while they're here

Easter eggs on sale next week.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Less Fairytale of New York, more, It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.

SUM LIGHT

This early morning winter's light

It borrows a sum from the day ahead

To repay a debt to the night

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 The first one before the first one before Xmas.

FIRST CUP OF TEA - WINTER SOLSTICE

 No druids, just fluids. 

STEAM POWERED

The waning yellow of Winter light. A muddy path decoupaged with leaves. Skeleton trees and evergreens. An arboreal Charles Atlas advert. Water vapour rises from the sides of houses as central heating systems are fired up across town. The whole of Northampton seems steam powered.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 🎼🎵🎶 Hark the herald angels sing! I've got a teabag on some string! 🎵🎶

THE SPRING OFFENSIVE

Winter's blanched nearly all colour from my garden.

Yet beneath the soil...

"I'm calling for volunteers to go above ground. It's a dangerous mission, some may call it futile but it's vital for our Spring offensive."

(Long pause)

"No one? OK, Snowdrop, you've volunteered."

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Your first-class ticket to Imagination, calling and Ponder, Muse and Wonder.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 The beginners guide to the art of pondering. 

JOKE TEA

 What happens when two cups of tea start telling jokes to each other?

You get a brew-ha-ha.

ROWING

The passive-aggressive beauty of a cold winter's day. A robin flits from fence to fence. How do they stay still long enough to be drawn for the Xmas cards? A squirrel spirals up a tree. Next door's rowing again. He's in his conservatory on his rowing machine. Language is fun.

FAIRS FARE

I had a wee snooze at seven 

I thought no one noticed but me

I'm not complaining, myself,

But my bus passengers seem to be.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 Suddenly lifted from our 3D world into a 1T world.

THE SOURCE OF THE NILE

A single glove in a bush is a secondhand story. I trace a long crack on the path back to a tree root and not the source of the Nile as I was beginning to think. Two joggers pass by, talking then breathing. They'd make good poets.

The loneliness of the long-distanced summer.

POLAROID MEMORIES

Northampton at dawn looks like it's just been shot by an old Polaroid camera. But as the day develops so my town appears through smudges, ghosts and guesses.

It makes me think of memories. How many do we really remember and how many are smudges, ghosts, guesses or camera tricks?

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Chair, bed, couch or stand, there's nothing in life that's quite so grand.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 Imagination navigation.

FOR LIFE

A Tesco Bag For Life is stuck in a tree. I suppose the bag and the tree will just have to learn to get along. A man in a balaclava crosses the road anonymously. A lady in her pyjamas is probably sleepwalking. Outside the primary school the parents are already playing car chess.

A LESSON LEARNED

I often walk into a room

And then forget just what to do

What was it that I came in for?

I wrack my brains, I can't be sure

Who are these kids who often feature?

I'm not cut out to be a teacher.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 The only serial I need for breakfast.

AFTER THE PARTY

The storm is over. My garden looks like it's thrown a riotous party and hasn't bothered tidying up. Leaves are scattered like wet confetti. My hedge seems to have been dragged through itself backwards. Errant twigs lie with naked wintry shrubbery - the dirty old devils!

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 Lift, sip and smile - my daily workout routine.

THE NIGHT SAFE

Just before dawn

The Night safe does stir,

Into the Day's takings

It's set to transfer.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

It sounded like the wind was playing kettle drums on my roof all night - it's only right that I drum up some tea with this kettle.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

I gently blow on my brew as my doors and windows are buffeted by the winds outside - I am only fairly confident that we won't have a storm in a teacup.

A VERY SHORT HORROR STORY

The young man stopped and rested his eyes upon a particularly attractive woman from across the road.

The woman screamed as the eyeless man smiled.

THEORETICAL PHYSICS

If there are infinite universes, as some theoretical physicists imagine, then surely there must be a world where firemen get stuck in trees and cats are called out to rescue them?

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 I am currently travelling at 1mph - 1 mug per hour.

DON'T BE CHEEKY

Once, a small boy was trapped inside a mirror. That small boy grew over time to be a young man, and that young man grew to be a grey-haired older man, forever trapped behind a mirror. 

The moral of this story?

Small boys, don't be cheeky to wizards. They've no sense of humour.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 Where we start leafing our way through the day.

A 70's XMAS

Packets of 'Eat Me' dates that I never saw anyone eat. Being too young to crack the Brazil nuts. My nan smoking her one fag a year. My little sister on a snowball, me on a half of shandy, both feeling very grown up, both pretending to like it. Neverending trifle.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

 Filmed in TetleyColor.