I see Thomas every Saturday and he gives me In exchange for a bottle of wine A small sketch of Lizzie Scott   I have twenty-eight of these sketches And arrange them carefully On a whitewashed wall   Lizzie Scott does not exist at all She lives only in Tom’s imagination And has always been […]

A Cavatina is a musical term originally meaning a short song of simple character Rather like a folk song In a way  The air is so warm tonight  It is always warm in the hills above the sea  You must have many happy memories  Yes I have many  But one stands out  Which one is […]

I was going to set my story in the Home Counties between the wars Possibly in Kent or Surrey or even Hampshire It would be the era of picturesque villages and bucolic railway stations My characters would come from the upper middle classes And have names like Toby Bunny Polly and Winnie Blue It would […]

Sodium Lights irritate me As I prefer soft light My name is George A sodium vapor lamp is a gas discharge lamp that uses sodium in an excited state to produce light  Angels have been known to use sodium lamps for recreational use  My name is Alexander of the Green Lights         […]

Poems do not belong To those who write them  But to those who need them   This line comes from the 1994 Italian movie It is one of the truest statements I have ever heard about poetry Poetry is very important I cannot stress this enough Too often it is ignored Real life inhibits poetry […]

Molly Skinner lived by the sea And always wore shorts and shirts She was a part-time actress Who acted full time But of late the roles Have been drying up She was due to play Gertrude At the Chichester Festival But the event was cancelled Due to the pandemic Molly has been writing books About […]

In the 1960s my father owned a number of shops in Wiltshire and Somerset These ranged from a couple of newsagents to a pet shop in Frome and a hardware shop in Holt He employed a number of people whose names I cannot fully remember However I clearly remember two who I only knew as […]

It is almost impossible to guess where driftwood originates The same cannot be said about the origins of soft pink bears    

On a sunny day in August 1977 Jane purchased a soft pink bear From a hairdressers in Dartmouth   Earlier that day I had found A piece of driftwood On Slapton Sands   I still have the driftwood But the soft pink bear Was lost in August 1995

I was asked to leave the building Before I entered no reason was given   You Smiled   As you sank deeper into the rubbish That was slowly collecting around you