SHAKESPEAREAN COOKERY

Some days my mind is an open book

Words flow all day long at my leisure

Others, like Shakespeare's cookery book,

I have to read measure for measure.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

I'm back at the imagination station.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

The DNA of a happy day.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

"It was the best of times."

(slurps)

"It was still the best of times." 

Charles Dickens - first draft of a Tale of Two Cities.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

The wrist bone's connected to the hand bone

the hand bone's connected to the finger bone

the finger bone's connected to the bone china ☕

NAKED AMBITION

What if our real life and our dreams were two competing versions of ourselves vying for the upper hand?Who would we want to win?

The real life version, who is flawed, human and driven by a desire to improve?

Or the dreamlike version, who is always turning up naked to exams? 

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Taking up with an old friend as if you'd never been away. 

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE WEATHER FORECASTER

Beneath the rain, below the wind, between the frequent squalls.

Poor old Michael Fish must think,

No storms are here at all.

ODD SOCKS

If your dreams just disappear 

When all the sleeping stops

You'll find them all still playing 

With all the lost odd socks.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Interviewing imagination for the important job of Ponderer.

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I sit at the front of a conference of memories and listen to the future, the keynote speaker.

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Taking me straight to the coalface of the imagination mine.

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Stirring stuff.

FIRST DRAFT

"Last night I dreamt I went to Whitley Bay again." - Daphne du Maurier's first draft.

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A feeling much like the one when your dad first lets go of the bike saddle and you're pedalling on your own, realising you can now go anywhere that you like.

ARTISTS

Along the horizon a silvery band of light appears behind backlit clouds. The sun will soon rise. I hope Friday remembers its lines. The town resembles a roughly-drawn charcoal sketch. A first draft. A memory. As we wake we fill that sketch with living colour. Artists one and all.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Laying the underlay for the day ahead.

LOVE IS...

Early stroll - to the kitchen. That teaspoon was sat by the sink last night. Won't its parents, presumably two tablespoons sat in the cutlery draw, be sick with worry? Love is... that Goldilocks muscle-memory honed from pouring just enough milk into your partner's tea cup.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Soul aerobics.

DRESSING THE DAYS

The spellings to the start of each day always changes

They wear their own clothes which they choose

But the endings remain all the same and what's strange is

They all wear the same pair of shoes!

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Filmed in TetleyColor.

RICTUS GRINS

Blue coping stones on my garden wall have mined diamonds from the frosty air and are sparkling in the sun. It's so cold I feel I could break chunks off of my garden with a toffee hammer. The sun is weaker than a lost argument and my lawn smiles a rictus grin of peppermint green.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Gritting the pathways of imagination.

SLOPPY

I'm up early when there's no guarantee of light. "Past performance is no promise of future results." We should read the small print on each day, not just assume it's arriving on time, or arriving at all.

Look what happened to those above the Arctic circle when they got sloppy!😉

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Allowing the imagination to read between the lines.

THE PEALING OF THE FROST BELLS

The sky's boiler light is lit. An orange band fills the horizon, rising with the morning sun. It's a cold, hard frost this morning. The frost is so thick it can look like a light dusting of snow. The frost bells peal across the land, the sound of the scraping of car windscreens.

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Lift-off.

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All the decs are down and I'm left with just my morning star. 

AUNT VI

Our Aunt Vi loved Roman Numerals.

We used to call her Aunty 6.

ONE SLIPPER

Our snow's all gone. The dazzling guest at the ball is no more. Shining for the briefest of times, leaving memories of sparkling white. 

A clump of snow remains behind a corner of the garden wall where no sunlight reaches. It's hardly Cinderella's slipper. But proof it was here.

NARNIA

Northampton or Narnia? We're blanketed in the uniformity of snow. Oh, to build a snowman! Grab an old hat, carrot & some twigs, really go to town. But it's supposed to melt by noon.

 

I'm daydreaming, snowdrifting back to a time when fat, wobbly snowmen seemed to last for weeks.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Much like every snowflake, each first cup of tea is unique.

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Oh soggy bag of Tetley's

just lying in my sink,

How do you do the things you do?

How do you make me think?

How do you take a simple brew

And turn it into wonder?

Dive my wrecks of memory

For treasure you then plunder?

WAITING

Frost has briefly stopped time. Fallen leaves are locked in an icy grip & the water in my bird bath has hardened to ice. Rooftops are whitewashed & my grass looks like it's going grey on top. I look for signs of life. But nothing moves. Then a bird hops onto a fence.

Waiting.

FIRST CUP OF TEA

Allowing you to sort through the junk drawer of your mind.

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Where the past meets the present to ponder the future.

SILENT SPEECH BUBBLES

The air's crispier than a crisp that's just won Crisp Of The Year; fresher than fresh toothpaste fresh from the tube at the toothpaste factory. A vaporised speech bubble hangs above the silent man, vaping at the bus stop. If only I spoke Vape, I could surely read his mind.

HANSEL AND GRETEL

Wednesday still has that fresh new year smell. The litter in the streets speaks of an inverted retelling of Hansel and Gretel. Where tipsy revellers leave party detritus and kebab boxes in their wake in order to find their way back to 2024. Alka Seltzer's stock price soars.

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 Just 358 more supping days until Christmas.