Houses That Used To Be Boozers

This town has its stark share of repossessed dark lairs, of houses that used to be boozers. Where once we were drinking we’re now slowly sinking in sofas the colour of bruises.

Ex-sawdust saloons are now minimalist rooms where every night somebody chooses to rest their behind and [...]]]> Here’s a poem from the new show Essex Lion. It’s one of my favourites.

Houses That Used To Be Boozers

This town has its stark share
of repossessed dark lairs,
of houses that used to be boozers.
Where once we were drinking
we’re now slowly sinking
in sofas the colour of bruises.

Ex-sawdust saloons
are now minimalist rooms
where every night somebody chooses
to rest their behind
and half-silence their mind
in a slow death of sweaty-necked snoozes
in a tap-drip of box sets and docs.

But these houses they used to be buzzing
they used be busting and splitting and spitting and ripe.
These places they used to be tasteless
they used to be graceless and legless and feckless each night!

Down lop-sided streets
fact’ry workers would meet
in these houses that used to be boozers.
They’d wash the week’s slog
in the honey-dew grog
in their bawdy and dubious rouses.

Now ladies frizz hair
in the Glade Plug-in air
of these houses that used to be boozers.
So far from the funk
of the blood, sweat and spunk
when these houses were floozey-filled boozers.
When these houses were ringing with song.
And I long for the throng of that song when we thrived
in these dives with their ligging and frigging and dirt.
These hell-holes where black-hearted arseholes
would pour souls, then sing and kick heads-in till everything hurt.

Farewell Rose & Crown
for The Ship has gone down,
she’s no more for rum-infused cruises.
The mad Horse & Dray
is not bucking today
he’s muzzled as McIntyre muses.

And clatters of pewter
are taps on computers
in houses that used to be boozers.
Hum-drum sobriety
there’s no society
houses that used to be boozers.

In cordoned-off hush
we are turning to mush
in these houses that used to be boozers,
we’re fingering phones
and we’re drinking alone
in these houses that used to be boozers.

GRAMMAR!

To who, or whom, it may concern verbose, composed or taciturn a verse from which we all can learn a verse concerning GRAMMAR!

Grammar? Huh? Yeah, don’t be dense that thing what makes all things make sense where us dyslexics come a cropper Grammar I don’t do it proper!

But grammar’s not all heirs and graces for [...]]]>

GRAMMAR!

To who, or whom, it may concern
verbose, composed or taciturn
a verse from which we all can learn
a verse concerning GRAMMAR!

Grammar? Huh? Yeah, don’t be dense
that thing what makes all things make sense
where us dyslexics come a cropper
Grammar I don’t do it proper!

But grammar’s not all heirs and graces
for whilst it has a Latin basis
we learn our tongue instinctively
from mum or dad or bad TV.

And some, of course, say “them”, not “those”
or dress their words in faddish clothes,
who swear blind that they “didn’t do nothing”
and other crude linguistic roughing

say “is it” not “are they” or worse
can only speak in rhyming verse,
drop commas like they’re Essex aitches -
they’re still communicative creatures.

Who banter, quip and joke with friends
their grammar perfect for their ends.
Pitched just right for their survival
Language, after all, is tribal.

Look, I’m in awe of Carver’s pauses
and Bertie Wooster’s complex clauses
but sometimes I prefer the bark
of LKJ or Johnny Clarke.

Yes, this is what I’m trying to say:
you don’t need all the rules to play.

L O V E J O Y

East Anglia, sweet lowland of my past, its Tudor towns, half timbered, skew and quaint. From Wivenhoe with clumps of brittle masts to Sudbury where Gainsborough came to paint his sleepy ponds, a place of soft constraint, that in the early nineties Auntie canned and served-up Sunday nights as “Lovejoy Land.”

Remember Lovejoy – divvie, dealer, [...]]]>

L O V E J O Y

East Anglia, sweet lowland of my past,
its Tudor towns, half timbered, skew and quaint.
From Wivenhoe with clumps of brittle masts
to Sudbury where Gainsborough came to paint
his sleepy ponds, a place of soft constraint,
that in the early nineties Auntie canned
and served-up Sunday nights as “Lovejoy Land.”

Remember Lovejoy – divvie, dealer, rogue,
the lovable but dodgy antiques cad?
When oak and silver trinkets were in vogue
the nation sat agog at McShane clad
in leather jacket, mullet oh, so bad,
out-foxing crooks in endless Essex June.
The men said “Clever!” Their wives quietly swooned.

And even though my parents spoiled my weekends
with car-sick drives to Lavenham or Clare
to snuffle round the antique shops, boutiques and
auction houses looking for some rare
Victorian dresser or Queen Ann Chair
come Sunday nights our family sofa-snuggled
as Lovejoy wriggled suavely out of trouble.

I loved the patchwork quilt of rural scenes
the best bits of East Anglia stitched together
with shots of Bury flanked by village greens
and always soaked in perfect summer weather
whilst we cuddled in our winter sweaters.
The chance to watch a grown-up programme with
the warmth and comfort of still being a kid.

I know it’s not the standard stuff of verses -
too middle class, unfashionable, too twee!
A poet’s primal scene should feature hearses
not Phyllis Logan primly sipping tea
but Sundays, Essex, Lovejoy, well, that’s me.
So my excitement then was palpable
when Lovejoy came to film in Coggeshall.

Production vehicles flanked the Market hill
as young and old stood gawping in the street
or peering down from paint-peeled window sills
at grumpy fellows kicking tripod feet
and waving booms, the olive-skinned aesthete
still nowhere to be seen in April rain
not even Tinker, Eric or Lady Jane!

The adults there soon tired of the scene,
they ambled home to hearths and inglenooks
to cook or read, and left their not-quite-teens
on rattling bikes, still hoping for a look.
That awkward age, too old for children’s books,
but artless still and out for games and fun,
the adolescent chaos just begun.

And there among the Tetris blocks of trucks
my hormones buckled, writhed and thumped my chest
as Sally Scattergood came riding up,
all straggly dirt-blonde hair and proper breasts.
Oh Sally from the year above, who messed
around with year elevens down the rec.
Oh Sally, who got served for cigarettes.

Oh Sally, Sally Sally went my heart
but not quite thirteen, what more could I do
far easier to hunt for autographs
from stars of tea-time telly than go through
the crushing squirm, the flustered ballyhoo
of talking to girls. Love put out my head
we set about finding Lovejoy instead.

And Sally being older took the lead
sent BMXs bombing over town
in search of anything with “BBC”
marked on it. Misty rain still drizzled down
as word got out that Lady Jane was found.
Outside the vast, ivy-clad MP’s pile
we skidded to a stop and waited while

the men with cameras spoke their TV slang.
To kids on bikes in puzzled, slack-jawed silence,
it seemed strange to see this alien gang
on Coggeshall streets with these things of Science,
our normality bound-up with giants
of the small screen. Someone shouted ‘CUT!’
and bold as yokels we just sidled up

to Phyllis Logan, who played Lady Jane,
and offered scrappy books and well-chewed bics.
She seemed surprised we even knew her name
no doubt she thought it odd we got our kicks
from Lovejoy, but then we were from the sticks.
And though we knew she wasn’t actually gentry
I swear it, as we left, one kid bowed gently.

So bouyed-up by our first success we shot
in search of stars with precious messy scrawls
threading our bikes past skew-whiff twists of shops,
dark wood framed houses, mossy red-brick walls
and gated, gravel drives to pseudo halls,
to wait for “CUT” down ram-shackle allies
and though I tried I couldn’t take my eyes off Sally.

I liked how she was bossy, no scrub that,
it pissed me off and yet I still enjoyed it
the same way when she nicked my baseball cap
it riled but I’d do nothing to avoid it.
Of course I’ve come to learn that being toyed with
is what the thrill of flirting’s all about
but back in ’94, it spun me out.

But every time my hormones dived and swirled
the hunt for autographs would ease my pain
I might have been a dolt with pretty girls
but making luvvies scribble down their names
was dead easy. We scrabbled down the skeins
of blackberry lanes all day in weak, warm sun
and got the whole lot, well, apart from one.

By 5 o’clock McShane still at large
as one-by-one the kids all peeled-off home
for slabs of Mighty White with cheese and marge
’til Sally S and I were left alone
to kick at blim-pocked swings and blush, my bones
like putty as her hands fell to my hips
she dug her nails in gently, kissed my lips.

And it was just a peck but in that second
something snapped, though what I still don’t know.
She giggled at me, grabbed her bike and beckoned
that I come. So, still flushed with the glow
of my first kiss I sped past bungalows
and new build semis till we reached the sloping
Tudor centre of my home town, hoping

now for something more than autographs
when Sally brake-screech stopped and sent me flying.
Bejewelled with grit I looked-up, in our path
was Lovejoy, wry eye-brow arched at me lying
face down in the dirt, bleeding and half crying.
He peered at me, then her, then me again:
Chasing girls eh? That’s a painful game.

He helped me to my feet then off he went
past cockeyed buildings bathed in honey light:
the sweet shop, Chapel pub and houses lent
on one another, decked in creams and whites
as early evening softly called in night.
I brushed my bloodied elbow, rubbed my head.
Should we get … Sally started. No, I said

We mumbled brisk goodbyes. I pushed my bike
as twilight sweetly sighed across the town.
I dreamed of Sally Scattergood that night
I penned a florid poem short on nouns.
But when I saw her next she pulled that frown
that one that seems to say: “Whatever, freak!”
I was inconsolable, for a week.

And now at thirty-one with kids, and belly,
my parents up and gone from Coggeshall.
I miss those nights of gentle Sunday telly.
I bought the Lovejoy boxset, watched it all
and waited for nostalgia’s lure to pull
me back to childhood. To village greens,
quaint country boozers, Constable-eque scenes,

warped-muntin-windowed shops and pale-ale sun.
And there they were, plus eighties number plates
and dialling codes without the extra “1″.
I thought about mine and Sally’s strange date
and realised I was twenty years too late
to wander like I did down Essex lanes,
too much has passed, I can’t go back again.

POOR SHAMER GENERAL For IDS

Saddle his nag, he rides at dawn a wet-eyed wave to his well-kept lawn he’s off to mock the lowest born The Poor Shamer General

All bloody-spurs and jet-black stead beware [...]]]> I can’t say this is my best work, but the swine doesn’t deserve it. The hookline is from a Barbara Ellen article. Respect and thanks to her.

POOR SHAMER GENERAL
For IDS

Saddle his nag, he rides at dawn
a wet-eyed wave to his well-kept lawn
he’s off to mock the lowest born
The Poor Shamer General

All bloody-spurs and jet-black stead
beware all feckless folk in need
he’ll cut just to watch you bleed
the Mail’s support is guaranteed.
Poor Shamer General

Flanked by SPADs and leering chums
he roams the shabby Northern slums
in search of tracky-bottomed mums
to muddle with sophistic sums
then offer up a fist of crumbs
The Poor Shamer General

The poor are litter, he’s the broom
and you don’t need that extra room
so pack your bags, you’re leaving soon
to a slum lord’s crumbling, ice-cold tomb
it’s no mod cons and on the moon
“Say thank-you now” the Shamer croons
Oh Thank-you! Poor Shamer General

But what’s this here? The Shamer’s right?
say red-faced fellows filled with spite
who swallow all of Murdoch’s shite
then vomit it all through the night
hunched-up in rage in laptop light
I understand you’re not that bright
but these people aren’t the ones to fight.
smite the Poor Shamer General

One day it might be you down there
a daily fight for food and air
desperate, hopeless, lonely, scared
let’s show a little kindness, yeah?

Essex Lion II

A fucking lion! A fucking lion! A fucking lion! A fucking lion!

So back we went to tents and litter Essex Lion jokes on Twitter keeping half the nation laughing french crop lads in work suits passing funny jpegs, lions with white socks, gold chains and TOWIE wigs. Of course they didn’t see a lion, sniggering at me and Brian

Gabby, Linda, Steve [...]]]>

Essex Lion II

A fucking lion! A fucking lion!
A fucking lion! A fucking lion!

So back we went to tents and litter
Essex Lion jokes on Twitter
keeping half the nation laughing
french crop lads in work suits passing
funny jpegs, lions with
white socks, gold chains and TOWIE wigs.
Of course they didn’t see a lion,
sniggering at me and Brian

Gabby, Linda, Steve and Babs
from lecture halls to backs of cabs
comparing us on panel shows
to nut jobs spotting UFOs.
A poet even, that was worse
he sent me up in laboured verse.
I saw him, what a prancing nob!
A poet! Yeah, like that’s a job.

But then we see it, news at noon
this bird holds up her great Maine Coon.
This, she pips, is Teddy Bear
ooh, he’s a one, gets everywhere
I reckons they saw him y’know
and holds her poxy moggy so
we see from head to derierre
a sort of glam rock terrier

The world’s convinced, but I ain’t buying
looked nothing like a fucking Lion!
Cooing in her mumsy sweater:
this’ll make our Christmas letter.
While this hawing Guaridaista
does his smirking, knowing piece to
camera, saying: Silly season!
Packs his van and leaves the region.

And that was that the world moved on
the Twitterati stopped their puns
from curious to satisfied:
They were drunk, or just plain lied.
Now no one much remembers it,
my neighbour (twat! )still gives me shit:
Oi Mike, he chortles, Careful, Deborah
thought she might have seen a Zebra!

Joke’s on you Dave, fucking fairy
Zebras! They ain’t even scary!
Not like the fucking lion I saw
I picture it, I hear it roar.
A fucking lion, I swear it mother
Lion-O’s outdoorsy brother!
Jungle’s King, the beast, the bloody
Tin Man’s fucking drinking buddy!

A fucking lion ! A fucking lion!
I’ll swear it when I’m fucking dying
how can a thing that makes you feel
be anything but fucking real.