Literature – Page 7 – Middle Age Fanclub

Book Review: ‘Come Again’ by Robert Webb.

I’ve always been a sucker for a good cover. Be it when choosing a book or, particularly when I was a lot younger, picking up vinyl in a record shop, I was always attracted by an interesting image or simply something colourful that caught my eye. And while this hasn’t always worked out – boy, I’ve bought some absolute turkeys in my time just because they were a bit shiny – it’s often been a decent indication of a potentially brilliant buy. But it wasn’t just the colour or the image that grabbed my attention with ‘Come Again’; the author was of obvious interest too.

If you’re unfamiliar with the name, Robert Webb is best known as a comic actor who was one half of Mitchell and Webb, the pairing responsible for hit shows like ‘Peep Show’ and ‘That Mitchell and Webb Look’. When I picked up ‘Come Again’, I was also fully aware of Webb’s memoir ‘How Not to be A Boy’ and so I was almost duty bound to buy it in the end!

‘Come Again’ tells the tale of Kate Marsden, who’s job in her own words is ‘to re-write history’; she cleans up the internet profiles of prominent people and high profile business types. And now she’s discovered something about a major client that is so morally abhorrent, she simply can’t cover it up. What to do with the information creates a major dilemma. But this isn’t Kate’s biggest problem, by a long, long way.

A year ago, Kate’s husband, Luke died. They’d been together since Fresher’s Week at university; 28 years in all. Unsurprisingly then, and despite the best efforts of friends and family, Kate has not been coping. Time isn’t healing and she’s resorted to drink, which has led her to the point she’s now faced with. Suicide. But not before one last enormous act of vengeance.

‘Come Again’ is a fantastic read. As a story, it’s multi-layered. We have the question of whether Kate will live, alongside whether she’ll do the right, but highly dangerous thing and expose the moral shortcomings a shady billionaire and her boss, Charles. There’s the sub text of the relationship with her mother as well as that with her old university friends, all of whom have spent the year since Luke’s death reaching out to her in an attempt to get her to start living her life again. And then, when you thought there wasn’t room for another layer, there’s the twist in the tale. Now that will really put the cat among the pigeons…or in this case, the middle aged woman among the Freshers.

I’d hugely recommend ‘Come Again’. It’s brilliantly written with a fantastic storyline and believable, but complex characters. Certainly, if you went to university, this book will transport you right back there. But besides that, alongside the subject of grief being tackled with a wonderfully light touch, there’s a wicked sense of humour here too, as you’d expect I suppose from a comic mind like Webb’s. Kate herself is a character whos full of surprises and towards the latter stages of the novel she even becomes a bit of an action hero, so there really is something for everyone in ‘Come Again’. There’s even a happy ending, although even that has quiet a bit of a twist to it and will not be what you were expecting at the halfway point of the novel.

If you like a laugh, a bit of nostalgia, action or romance, ‘Come Again’ is well worth picking up. And it’s got a lovely shiny cover too! What’s not to like?

I’d give ‘Come Again’ by Robert Webb

Poetry Blog: ‘The cold does not embrace you.’

I’ve written about sleep and sleeplessness quite a few times before. It’s a topic that I keep returning to because every once in a while I’ll find my sleep pattern disturbed and often for a few nights in a row I’ll find myself either lying awake and unable to focus on sleep because my mind is racing or just out of bed, sitting downstairs in our house, wide awake.

This is a poem that focuses on the former of those two scenarios, although as a result of my mind racing, I eventually got out of bed and wrote the poem. It was a night where, if I’m honest, I’m not sure whether I was awake or sleeping fitfully and suffering with nightmares. One thing’s for sure; it wasn’t a pleasant night’s sleep and there was a lot that disturbed me. You think that nightmares are things you left behind in childhood, but then get reminded that you’re sadly mistaken!

The cold does not embrace you
yet, for a short time its shiver soothes your skin
like a smooth palm comforting you through illness, fear.
An uneasy dream shifts and your thoughts are strangers
caught in the void between the fevered images of disturbed sleep
and the disquieting thud of your heart as you realise you're awake again.
Without warning, the rough skin of working hands grabs at your jaw,
takes hold, clutches.
A strangers eyes stare out from a familiar face,
gripped by a mood you know all too well,
before one last squeeze,
then the calloused hand, shoves your face away viciously,
like an imperfect toy on a production line, rejected
not good enough to be loved.
You blink to try and wake only to find another face now,
her hot breath invading your nostrils,
her gibberish bringing spittle to your skin,
her disapproval at the runt of the litter writ large
in neon across unloving eyes and twisted expression
informing you again of what feels like their hatred,
before words are put in your mouth and you flounder,
helpless against a place you don't belong,
a jigsaw you don't fit.
Shaking free, you brace yourself, 
turn your collar against the piercing winter and stumble forward,
in search of somewhere warm.
And while these ghosts will always haunt you 
with their chill,
every once in a while the winter sun will warm your skin.

It feels like there are two antagonists in this poem. The first I’m not sure of and it would be unkind to speculate. However, the second is definitely my grandmother, who was someone that I had a fractious relationship with, at best. She was a woman who never seemed to display any warmth whatsoever to me, which as a child was quite perplexing. In company with my many cousins, I remember she’d frequently refer to me as ‘this one’ while everyone else got called by their name. Let’s just say that it was clear I wasn’t her favourite! I can’t say that her treatment of me didn’t bother me, as it did. But as I got old enough to make my own choices, I just decided to avoid being in the same room as her. Even now though, there are occasions when she comes to mind and it’s never pleasant. Hence, the words in the latter half of the poem.

I tried to end the poem on a more positive note, just explaining what I’ve just mentioned, really. Childhood memories will always be there and will always crop up and affect your day. But there’s always a positive to be found.

I hope you enjoyed the poem or at least it had some kind of effect on you as a reader. The memories I’ve written about were incredibly vivid and I hope that feeling is conveyed by what I’ve written. As ever, feel free to leave a comment.

Poetry Blog: What next?

About two years ago I started writing poetry. It was something that I’d experimented with before, but never really formally or with any kind of purpose. I must have written poems back in the stone age when I was at school, but would have no written record of such ramblings. And anyway, my school wasn’t the kind of place where a boy wrote poetry, unless he was ordered to by one of the psychotic teachers. Boys did sport, yelled a lot, swore and most likely spat on the ground like their life depended on it. Boys. Did. Not. Write.

Any poetry written in class would be hidden away from prying eyes and mocking tongues. Any hint of a notebook being carried around would provoke instant hatred and could only lead to years of cruel abuse from your peers (and probably even some of your friends).

As a younger adult, I’m sure I’d tried to write poems, but I’m pretty certain that when they existed, it would have been on scarps of paper and that these were long ago confined to the recycling plant.

I’ve never been a confident person. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’ve learnt to wear a convincing mask in order to hide what is actually a rather crippling lack of confidence. So, although I felt like I had something to say and that I could write, it was going to take a seismic shift to make me commit ideas to paper in the form of poetry.

It turns out that ‘thing’ was lockdown. I was locked down almost immediately once the decision was made. While colleagues stayed in school and battled to keep some sense of normality in people’s lives, I was told that I was vulnerable and had to stay at home. Couple that with a complete failure in terms of remote learning with my laptop and there were a huge amount of days waiting to be filled.

I’d started my blog by then and so was in the habit of writing. As can be the case with me, I wasn’t really in the habit of sleeping regular hours though. And one night, lying awake with words whirling round my head, I realised that I had the bones of a poem keeping me awake. So, I crept downstairs, opened a notebook and wrote a poem; one draft and what felt like no particular thought needed. I don’t know whether it reads like a one-draft-no-effort poem, but it was done! I thought I’d published that poem as part of the bog, but looking back, it doesn’t seem so.

From there I came up with the idea of a lockdown writers’ group – Lockdown Literature, you can read about it on the link below – where friends and colleagues could publish anything they’d written; whatever it took to stave off the boredom of being isolated like never before. Inspired by others, I was able to write a few more poems.

Lockdown Literature

Our Lockdown Literature group made me think about what to do with my poems. By now I was writing them regularly and so, once I’d decided that a) I had the confidence to share and b) I didn’t feel it was too much of a pretentious thing to do, I started to publish some of my poems as blogs, adding a little bit of explanation about the poem and about my thinking when writing it. They seemed to go down well and it gave me another blogging avenue to explore.

Now though, I want to develop things a bit. It’s lovely that people who read the blog like my poems, but I want to really test myself with it and I must admit that I’m unsure of how to move forward. I’ve considered things like poetry competitions, but from what I can see, a lot of them require entries to be unpublished and I don’t really know if my own blog counts in those terms. However, it’s stopped me entering anything so far. It’s certainly something that I need to look into and if anyone has any advice, I’d gladly listen.

Another route I’ve wondered about with my poems is to attempt to put together an anthology, but it’s an area that I know next to nothing about. I realise that I could self-publish, but without adequate promotion, even an anthology is not going to gain any interest. Is it the kind of thing I can send to publishers? If so, how do I group poems and how do I approach agents or publishers? Again, it’s something I really need some advice on, so if you’re reading this and you have any insight, I’d be really grateful for your help.

The third and final way of developing my poetry terrifies me. In actual fact, I’ve only considered it because a few people have suggested it. One kind soul even invited me along to actually take part. What am I talking about? Performance poetry! This is something that I can’t deny tempts me, but despite my advancing years and the fact that I talk at people for a living, the thought of standing on a stage – makeshift or otherwise – in a room full of people, reading out my poems, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my tummy feel a little bit poorly!

It’s not actually the thought of an audience that bothers me very much. No, it’s more the thought of exposing something as personal as my poetry to what would likely be an entirely new audience. Every day of every week brings an audience of harsh critics in the form of pupils in a classroom, so speaking in front of people is second nature. And not to play the tortured ‘artist’ here, but the idea of reading so many personal words (does that make sense?) and even considering myself any kind of poet, feels very much beyond me.

Still though, I find myself trying to pluck up the courage and find the time to attend such an evening, not as a performer, but as a punter just to try and see what it’s all about. Maybe once that step is taken, I could find the courage to put myself down for some kind of open mic slot. Even typing the words fills me full of dread though, so it would be one hell of a step to take!

So 2022 has to be the year that I trying and ramp up my poetry game. It reality feels like something that could develop and something that I believe in somewhere at the back of my mind! I just need to work out how.

As ever, feel free to leave a comment, especially if you have any suggestions that might help me!

Poetry Blog: ‘About a time when I worried that I hadn’t really fulfilled my potential.’

This is another recently discovered poem. To cut a long story that I’ve told a million times before short, I think it’s one that I’ve written during a night when I’ve been unable to sleep. These are horrendous when you have work the next morning, yet enormously fulfilling when you can sit and write a few things for your blog! Unfortunately, once written down, some of them then tend to get lost in notebooks. This is always temporary though, hence this poem which was one of a ‘crop’ I discovered when flicking through an almost full notebook recently.

I think it must have been written when I was feeling a little bit down. I’ve struggled a little bit – nothing major and nothing that a good bout of telling myself ‘pull yourself together’ doesn’t solve – over probably the last 18 months or so and I think that this poem was written at some point during summer 2021 as I got particularly low at that time.

It’s a bit of a rambling title, but if you read regularly you’ll know that I struggle with titles. When I came to think of this one nothing succinct came to mind and every time I read it through I came back to the feeling that I hadn’t fulfilled my potential. It’s something I mildly beat myself up about on a fairly regular basis. Deep down, I think I’ve done alright though!

'About a time when I worried I really hadn't fulfilled my potential'

A rowing boat with a broken oar.
A home-made go-kart that doesn't quite steer right.
A shy child, hidden behind a parent's legs, clinging to a familiar hem.
A broken compass.
A book, bouncing between charity shops, corners curling more with every journey, pages thumbed smooth, seeking a shelf.
A grey pebble on a beach.
A crab in a rockpool, fighting the relentless pull of the tide.
A dandelion clock.
A partnerless sock.
A derelict building, stripped of its dignity.
A written off car travelling on an unfamiliar motorway on the back of a lorry for all to see.
A bag for life abandoned when the handle snapped.
A festival tent.
A once cherished trophy now confined to a box in the loft of a middle aged man.
An unfashionable toy at Christmas.

So this poem was written at a time when I felt a little bit broken. It’s a tough thing to admit, so usually I just stay quiet. I try to leave other people unburdened by my troubles and having been brought up in a family where how you felt wasn’t really discussed, I suppose it feels naturally. But at this point in time, I clearly needed to talk.

Although I can’t specify an actual day, I can pinpoint the time period of writing this poem. Without the routine of work, summer can sometimes get a bit dull and if we don’t get the weather – which we often don’t in England – it can become difficult to stop the routine of just doing not a great deal. And that kind of thing makes me suffer a bit. I don’t enjoy just sitting round, but if there’s little to do, I feel like I’m wasting the day. At the time of writing the poem, I was thinking about my age, my career and even my choices going as far back as going to high school. None of it made me feel very good. Lots of it made me think that I could have just been so much better at life, so the poem is just a list of what I felt I was like.

I have to say, I’m a lot calmer at the moment, a lot happier. But I still feel like some of the metaphors are apt. They’re probably apt for a lot of us.

I chose the dandelion clock because it’s just waiting to get destroyed and it doesn’t take a lot to do just that. A gust of wind can scatter them everywhere, such is their fragility. I think when I’m at a low ebb, perhaps that’s how it is. I’m OK to a point and then someone might say something, completely innocently and it’ll be the kind that I dwell on and probably devote far too much time to. Confidence, like self-esteem is a funny thing, I suppose.

The image of the shy child felt like it resonated too. I’ve never really been a confident person, just someone who can put on a front or come up with good ways of avoiding certain situations. Even at my age there are times when I could do with someone’s legs to hide behind.

I hope you enjoyed reading the poem and if it resonated with you, well I hope it helps a little bit. I think we all probably have times when we feel like we could just be that little bit better. The important thing is to realise how good you already have it. There’s almost always a positive if you look hard enough.

Book Review: ‘There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom’ by Louis Sachar

For the first few chapters of reading this book I really didn’t like Bradley Chalkers, which felt a bit mean given that he’s a primary school child. But, as a teacher, it felt like everything he did was calculated to disrupt and irritate and that Bradley didn’t want to do anything he was told to do. I’ve known a lot of Bradley Chalkers in my time in the classroom!

Then, the more I read, the more I started to understand him. The more I understood him, the more I felt sorry for him and wanted him to have more to his days than picking on girls, threatening to spit on his classmates and telling lies. But even Bradley’s lies and fantasies are endearing. Away from school he has an army of friends in the form of many of his toys and his conversations with this gang made me fall for him all the more!

I first heard about ‘There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom’ from Twitter. I think it was a recommendation from a comedian that I follow and the gist of his tweet was that everyone should read the book in order to enjoy the kindness inside. So, I bought the book. Actually, that’s a lie worthy of Bradley Chalkers himself. What happened was that I put the book on an Amazon Wishlist and my wife bought it for me! And what a choice it turned out to be!

Louis Sachar is undoubtedly more famous for his YA novel ‘Holes’ which is itself a wonderful read. I must admit, even though I’ve read a few of his other books I’d never even heard of this one. And while Twitter can be a real snake pit at times, it’s recommendations like this one that make me glad I ever logged on. ‘There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom’ is a kids’ book but it’s very much accessible to all. Whether you’re of elementary school age or left education a very long time ago it doesn’t matter; everyone should read ‘There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom’. Literally everyone.

The story follows the fortunes of Bradley Chalkers, an elementary school problem child. Bradley is a loner; at first glance mean, angry and disruptive and it seems like everyone has given up on him. Until he’s given an appointment with the new school councillor, Clara who immediately takes to him, helping to change his life for the better. But this isn’t a simple and formulaic happy ending kind of book. There’s plenty of resistance and self sabotage from Bradley along the way and this makes for a comical, yet often sad read.

This is essentially a good news story though. Despite his protestations and his resistance to change and the help of people around him, Bradley begins to make friends and live what we’d happily term a normal life. But the journey from problem child to golden child is never going to be easy. There are traps and trip hazards along the way and just when you think he’s finally cracked it, Bradley always seems to fall or fail.

‘There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom is a beautifully written book. Sachar’s characters, particularly Bradley, are wonderful and very easy to imagine. I always like a book where I feel that I can consistently ‘hear’ the characters whenever I pick it up, and this book has that quality in abundance. It’s a lovely, engaging story that will have you smiling, laughing and wincing in equal measure. So what are you waiting for? Get yourself a copy – or just put it on your Wishlist and wait – and fall just a little bit in love with Bradley and his life.

With a great big smile on my face and the realisation that this won’t make a jot of difference to sales of the book, I’d give ‘There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom’…

Poetry Blog: Resolutions

I wrote this poem shortly after writing my list of New Year’s Resolutions for 20022. The poem is definitely more serious than the blog that blossomed from my list of resolutions. But only just. More realistic though, too.

Resolutions

Big Ben's chimes are still ringing in the ears as we attempt the first, a vague but heartfelt vow to be a better person,
where neither the wit nor will is available to achieve success.
Throw in some tired, old standards; exercise more, drink less, and a project like finally writing that book for good measure, you know the drill.
Then we head outdoors - a new sport or interest, more days out with the family, all underwritten with an escape clause allowing excuses involving adverse weather, where adverse is defined by you and you only.
Later, intellectualise oneself by by loudly proclaiming that you'll learn a language, a musical instrument or even a martial art in order to sound windswept and interesting.
Then, spout keywords and phrases in an attempt to appear somehow superhuman and worthy.
Improve my core - whatever that means,
something, something charity, listen more, appreciate something, anything, while not knowing even the postcode of where to start.
Read more will become nap more by early February,
track down and meet up with old friends will become impossible when a single Google search does not instantly reveal their whereabouts
and when a name appears that actually could be them you will remember your allergy to upheaval and the well worn fact that you are nothing more than comfortable with continually feeling miserable.
By mid-January, the wayside will have claimed at least 8 out of 10 of these resolution cats and routine will revert to being the friend that you never lost in the first place.
You'll tell yourself at least you tried, then resolve to not to do i all again next year, before buckling under the pressure as December meets January once more.

Like everyone else, I’ve set out with good intentions for at least a few of my 29 New Year’s resolutions. In fact, as it turns out I’m actually making progress with some of them. I’m making healthier eating choices and have completed my first 10k run of the year too. However, I haven’t got myself into any serious exercise as yet in line with my aim of getting my lockdown abs back! I have started researching more healthy eating though by watching some YouTube videos on Instant Pot recipes today! This has really surprised me!

I’ve started being a better brother too, sending my sister’s birthday card off 4 days before her birthday when usually I’m closer to doing this 4 hours before it! Furthermore, where 11 days into 2022 and I haven’t bought a single packet of crisps. I’ve also just about eaten the final packet left in the house.

But I know I won’t keep this up. And that’s pretty much the crux of the poem. It’s not a new start. In fact, it’s really just a new day. These ambitions will inevitably fall by the wayside. I’d imagine that most of us will be exactly the same. But, I suppose in having 29 resolutions I have a bit of a chance of keeping a few of them up.

I think that although the poem has a bit of a pessimistic – maybe realistic – feel to it, the ending gives it a bit of a softer underbelly. When I think about it, as futile as they sometimes might be, there’s nothing actually wrong in making these resolutions. And if you can improve just one tiny fraction of your life in making them, well why not?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the poem…I’m off enquire about a weekend of dry stone walling and learning Inuit…

Poetry Blog: Christmas Lights

So this is a poem I wrote a few weeks back. It’s seasonal and inspired by the sights around the town where I live, particularly in the centre where the Christmas tree was put up and decorated a few weeks ago now and the town had its annual ‘big’ lights switch on.

I think the other thing that inspired it – apart from Christmas itself – a time that I’ve always loved – is the way that people celebrate the festive period with lights on houses, trees visible in windows and various ornamental features around the gardens. I know some may think it’s tacky and cheap, but for me it’s always felt just a little bit magical. As I say though, I’ve always loved Christmas.

Anyway, it got me thinking and then inspired me to scrawl down some stuff in my notebook. From there, well it became a poem.

A Town at Christmas

For weeks the town's lights shimmer a symphony,
spotlighting the drizzle of a northern sky and somehow warming the air of frozen nights.
The town hall clock seems to reach for the sky even more keenly than before at this time of year,
its stately architecture contrasting sharply with the fact that spirits are lifted more by oversized, synthetic snowmen, baubles and Santas
flanked by grinning cartoon reindeers.
Every walk home brings a new discovery,
a rueful smile and outside, adults are kids again, footsteps lightened, strides widened by this special atmosphere.

It’s funny how, the same old places and the same old sights can be transformed at this time of year. There are certainly more beautiful places and even at Christmas, more beautifully decorated places. But I don’t think it matters. Wherever you live can feel utterly transformed as each day of December passes and more decorations appear. Throw in the sound of Christmas songs and what I suppose we have to refer to as a dollop of Christmas spirit and it really is the best time of year and you could be living anywhere.

Well, as I write we have a few days until Christmas. In our house there’s still a lot to do in order to be prepared for the big day. Family to visit, tidying to be done, last minute shopping and wrapping and of course relaxing and watching Christmas films. Hopefully, if you’re as flat out as we are, it’ll all be worth it and you’re still finding time to enjoy the kinds of things I’ve written in the poem!

Have a great Christmas everyone!

Poetry Blog: Christmas Do

It’s that time of year again, isn’t it? Where entire offices, factories and other work places worth of people pour into bars and clubs to celebrate the festive season together by getting drunk beyond belief and ending the night making friends with the toilet. If they make it that far. Because, of course that would be what Jesus would’ve wanted.

And although these ‘dos’ are under threat again as yet another variant of Covid rises and takes hold, some people still won’t be stopped in their quest for Yuletide humiliation. Some in fact, will have already set off on their quest having been out for the first, second or even third of many such ‘dos’.

It’s been years since I bothered. So many in fact that I genuinely can’t remember the last one I went on. I’ve been on loads of them though, so speak from experience, but I think I just got to a point where I couldn’t be bothered any more. I know in part this was down to the fact that where I worked and where I lived were just far too far apart, making going out with those I worked with impractical at best. Maybe I just grew up a little bit as well.

Anyway, I wrote a short poem about them.

Christmas Do

For one night only, rival factions might just lose their friction,
conversations blossom, gropes and saliva are traded with imperfect strangers.
All in the name of the Christmas Do.
In a corner Elsa from Frozen snogs the face off an elf
as different office fancy dress parties collide,
and while love won't blossom, regret will thrive
as, in another part of the bar, a wobbly one-kneed proposal is hugged away, laughed off in the hope that all the morning brings is amnesia and a sore head, perhaps, at worst, an oh-so-distant memory that will remain unspoken.
In every corner someone is crying while no one really knows why,
but despite the season to be jolly, tears will flow like waterfalls
Elsewhere, the inevitable scuffle jars against festive frivolity,
briefly shattering the good will to all men, until all unwise men are dragged away to consume even more of what seasoned their aggression in the first place.
He's not worth it, Darren, because it's Chriiiiistmaaaaas, Darren
As tradition demands, the night will end with a raucous singalong as groups come together to link arms and drag each other around the dancefloor roughly and without any sense of rhythm or in fact any more than a quarter of the right words to the song.
And then, it's off into the night, until next year when they'll Christmas Do it all once more.

When I initially wrote the poem I was quite happy with it. I liked one or two of the reference points and thought that in some places I’d nailed the idea of the Christmas Do. However, a few days later when I came to look at it again, I was unhappy with the length of it. So – and I must say it was in haste, so forgive me if it doesn’t quite work – I added some lines and fiddled around with others. This was all done while various family members kept asking me to do stuff, so maybe the thought process wasn’t particularly flowing either. As a result, I’m not quite sure about some of it, especially the end, which changed on more than one occasion. But, if I continued drafting it would likely be January and what use is a Christmas themed poem at the start of the year?

So there you have it. Hopefully I’ve captured most, if not all of the horror of these nights. All in the name of Christmas, but often without even a hint of good will in sight. I think that many of the references in the poem are very British. Certainly, I hope that other countries don’t do Christmas nights out in the same fashion that we do.

Poetry Blog: Fragment

I’m returning to familiar territory with this poem; sleeplessness. It’s something I suffer with every once in a while, so it’s not a terrible problem, but it can leave me feeling absolutely exhausted for a few days. As a result, I often find myself somewhere between a zombie and a purely functional human being, particularly at work.

This was a poem I believe was written a few months back. In fact, to begin with it wasn’t a complete poem as it was a kind of ‘something’ that I found on the bottom half of a page in my notebook , sat beneath a different, finished poem. I didn’t even notice it when I went back to write the other up for another blog as it just looked like 10 lines worth of notes. Thankfully, I found it again when flicking through the same notebook a few weeks ago. Once I’d given it a read I decided that I’d have to sit back down and get it finished.

I have a vague memory of finishing the poem at the top of the page and deciding to head back to bed. However, before I’d gotten up out of the chair another few lines arrived in my head and I sat back down to see what I could put together. I imagine it was another half an hour before I headed back upstairs. Anyway, it turned into the poem below.

The sounds of your sleeping collide with that of the pulse echoing around my head in the otherwise silent room. Awake again.
It prompts me to move, eventually, sleepily, stumbling out of the room.
On the landing I freeze at movement in an adjacent room
as someone stirs.
Trying not to wake them, I imagine their panic and confusion in a darkened room, perhaps abruptly departing a dream
and still myself for a moment while they return once more to their slumber.
Toes curled over the edge of every stair, I descend cautiously, robotically
before brutally puncturing the silence with electronic noise and light
as I disable the alarm, listening for a stretched out moment
before silently opening a door to pad across the pitch black front room.
The irony is not lost on me as my eyes refuse to wake fully,
my vision comfortably blurred around the edges as I finally sit
and wonder what to do now.

I like to take myself off downstairs when I can’t sleep. First and foremost it means that I’ve got less chance of waking of the rest of the family. One of the main reasons for getting out of bed in the first place is so that I don’t wake my wife. The other reason is that I enjoy the silence of the downstairs of the house. Eventually I’ll settle at the dining room table either to get some ideas down in a notebook – if it’s ideas for writing or lines for a potential poem that have woken me. And this was what happened here.

I called the poem ‘Fragments’ for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because that’s what it was when I found it; just fragments of an idea. Lines scribbled down underneath a completed poem like I’d just had enough and wanted to just get some sleep. I also called it fragments as a reference to my sleep at these types of times. Sleep is fragmented when I’m like this. I’ll usually sleep for a little bit and then wake up, unable to get back to it. It’s then that I find myself getting up. Even when I eventually head back to bed I often can’t sleep and will wake up regularly when I do.

As usual I’d love to read any comments about the poem. I hope you enjoyed it.

Poetry Blog: A Bracing Start to The Day.

I wrote this poem very recently after a drive to work. The title seems fantastically relevant now, given that we’ve just had our first snow, brought by a storm that featured some frightening 40 miles an hour winds.

It wasn’t the drive that prompted me to write, but the weather and just the way my world looked on that morning. It was the kind of morning that I’ve always really liked. Bright, crisp, dry. Quite still too, so ideal as I’m really not a fan of the wind. The kind of morning that I’d love to have gone for a run on. But instead, I was off to work to spend the day indoors, missing out on a beautiful day.

The first thing that struck me was spotting the moon still up in the sky, despite the daylight. I noticed it as I was getting into the car and then kept spotting it as drove. It prompted a series of thoughts and observations and I was suddenly really keen to write. But that’s a bit difficult at the wheel of the car and even trying to dictate into my phone would have been out of the question. So, it was a case of scribbling things down in a notebook as soon as I got into my classroom.

I worked on putting the notes together as a poem once my day of teaching was over with. Here’s the result.

A Bracing Start to The Day

The moon, still high in the sky,
suggests night rather than the bracing start to the day
that this early light informs us of.
Vapour trails from soaring planes scratch the blue
from a near perfect sky, like claw marks
down a freshly painted canvas.
Scan the horizon and a coral banner announces 
the sun, while frost on windscreens
defies its very existence.
Crisp air takes the breath away and begins 
to numb the fingers and toes as every
breath spray paints a fleeting pattern in the air.
Winter is creeping towards us.

I can see the weather influencing more writing in the weeks to come, especially on those early starts. I’m up early every other Sunday setting up goalposts, nets, corner flags and everything else that goes alongside matchday for the football team that I coach. I always find it a lovely peaceful, calm time of the day and usually quite look forward to it. Even in the worst of weather it’s nice just to be outside and alone with my thoughts and watching things come together.

I hope you enjoyed reading the poem. It’s a little shorter than they usually are, but it’s one that I think I quite like. Feel free to leave a comment below.