{"id":34480,"date":"2026-05-31T10:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T09:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/?p=34480"},"modified":"2026-05-31T11:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T10:15:10","slug":"man-of-kent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/31\/man-of-kent\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe of Kent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You really like Kent <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Were you born the county <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Alas no but I consider myself <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An honorary member<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A Man of Kent <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If I could be so bold <br><br><br>I rather like your poetry Joe <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have not written much about Kent<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bishopsbourne was a lovely poem<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I enjoyed its slow creation<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But there are others <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whose pen is far superior to mine<br><br><br>Jocelyn Brooke imagines the\u00a0Bishopsbourne\u00a0of his childhood <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As an idyll <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A kind of an English <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Middle-Class Eden<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He seems to recall the village<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Held in a perpetual trance <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of hot summer afternoons   <br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What are your thoughts Joe<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well apart from the motorway <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the top of the hill<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This area has not changed a great deal <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These awful roads were always<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Going to scar the landscape <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the same might have been said <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">About the railways over a century ago<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet we have accepted and loved the railways <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For as long as they have existed <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the same cannot be said of motorways <br><br><br>The Elham Valley has suffered scars <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like many other areas of Kent <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was all very sad and preventable<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As it was tinged with a rancid corruption<br><br><br>Did  Brooke witness this vandalism <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He would have been aware <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of what was happening <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He had seen it all before<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As the Elham Valley Railway <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Died a painful death in 1947 <br><br><br>The Sins of Our Fathers <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Tyranny of the Stupid <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What is the meaning of progress <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is a question without an answer     <br><br><br><br>Martha interview Joe <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You really like Kent Were you born the county Alas no but I consider myself An honorary member A Man of Kent If I could be so bold I rather like your poetry Joe I have not written much about Kent Bishopsbourne was a lovely poem I enjoyed its slow creation But there are others [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34480"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34489,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34480\/revisions\/34489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}