1
What you need right now
is to take your shoes
away from the wallpaper
drop out into the noise
away from the voices in your head
away from socialising with houseflies.
Pick up your briefcase
your ink-stained notebook
choc-o-bloc with post modern dust
when you reach the corner
of Ghost Town Street
bypass as much midweek traffic as you can
lose yourself in the back lanes of Greenbank
then cut across to Freedom Fields
that old Victorian nightingale on the hill
try to imagine your blue-grey eyes
looking through a post-war window
its November
you’ve just missed Halloween
there are leaves and rockets in the sky
its seven and a bit weeks to Christmas
but you don’t know that yet.
Note the absence of storks
which some years later
slipped into the narrative of mythology
only to vanish again.
Note the long gone models of cars
names once so familiar
now lost to you as they slowly
drive up the hill from the direction
of Beaumont Park.
Turn your blue-grey eyes
west for a moment
over the rooftops to the train station
five minutes by pram
to the house where you lived as a child
around the corner from Wyndham Square
in the quiet years after the war.
Look into the future
sense the nostalgia
waiting patiently in the past
tuck those memories away for now
let other memories loose
drifting over the rooftops of Mutley Plain
now glimpsed in the distance
five minutes by walking stick
to Cheltenham Place.
2
Walking through the heart of the city
you dip your pen into the river
and there you dream of Ursula
there you dream movies
that never star Redford or Coburn
or anyone who crossed
your childhood gaze.
There are narratives here
slipping down side streets
tangents waiting on every corner
distractions to lure you
fairytales to enchant
memories hidden under
the closed eyes of bar rooms.
There are dropouts
smoking reefers on Lisson Grove
dropping out to write fiction
dropping out to write free verse
it comes out of stardust
comes out of a fistful
of twenty pound notes
the past lives here
in a room above your shoulders
it slips out of a briefcase
out of a pocket
a pen searching for a notebook
to lay words down
in an ink-free zone
before the voices in your head
slip back into silence, into solidarity.
Your gaze drifts across the road
to the Hyde Park Hotel
where nothing moves out on the island
where that collective silence
stretches into April.
You could live here
a freeloader writing free verse
dropping the Queen into the jukebox
playing the Rolling Stones
in a nod to irony.
On some future weekend
when the doors of the hotel
are flung open
it’ll be like November
there’ll be rockets all over town
like there were on that bonfire night
when you went to a Language Club reading
in a room above the bar
the night a rock band opened
for Lee Harwood and Helen Macdonald.
Moving closer to the island
lit up in red and amber
you walk with the green man
under the ever changing
colours of the road
looking up you see that
the hotel’s brightly lit windows
have now grown dark.
As you cross the road
with your unvaccinated shadow
you see curtains move
sense the eyes of bartenders
looking out, marooned in lockdown.
Turning in the direction of North Hill
you travel back through the years
set somewhere between
ballroom dancing and punk rock
you see memories
popping out of the darkness
old friends hanging around
on street corners
flashbacks flickering into life
on the screen of the old Belgrave cinema.
As you begin to close the door
on these tit-bits of suburban fiction
you stumble on a memory
of desert island Dansette nights
smoking weed on Connaught Avenue
talking psychedelic rock with Roy Plomley
plonking you feet under Angie’s table.
You see yourself crossing the doorsteps
of second-hand bookshops
in desert island boots or plimsolls
before heading back home
to the Tumbleweed Hotel to read
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Michael Moorcock
Larry McMurtry.
Leaving Mutley Plain
you take off on another shoestring tour
through the posh part of town.
After the leafiness of Wilderness Road
you reach the summit of Hill Crest.
Laying down your free verse flag
you discover there’s more than one house
on Hermitage Road.
Here on the hill overlooking the city
you see the dark eyes of clouds
overlooking the ground.
As the rain starts to tumble out of the air
it falls from your eyes in solidarity.
3
In a hat trick nod to Charlie Chaplin,
Acker Bilk and John Cleese
you take a bowler hat
out of your briefcase
you recall carriages of bowlercrats
reading broadsheets
travelling home to Highgate
like some underground spy ring
on the Northern Line.
You try to recall a time
when bowler hats ever formed
or complimented
part of a pinstripe period
down here in the seaside sticks
but nothing pops out of the trilby.
If bowler hats had ever been worn here
then the chances are
they would have been worn
in the vicinity of Henders Corner
but in another lifetime
as the crow flies or the frisbee
but even that feels
slightly anachronistic
as does the notion
of crows playing frisbee
in or out of any pinstripe period.
Out on Mannamead Road
you try to remember the names
of other writers who’ve lived here
Adele Seymour
Francesca Henderson
Veronica Russell
Harriett Carrington-Fisher
George Braithwaite
Eric Applegate
Amelia Wickenden
Alice Midwinter
Gabrielle Lane.
The straw hatted surrealists
of Mannamead and Hartley
who’ve always reminded you
of a posh spy ring in Portmerion
Cambridge
Newton Ferrers
Noss Mayo.
Taking a seat in Thorn Park
you call a friend in Freedom Fields
to tell her you can’t remember
the last time you left Speedwell City.
Ending the call you write a note
to the voices in your head
listing some of the things
you’d like for Christmas
a pair of grungy trousers
a clarinet
a slapstick movie
with the sound turned down.
Leaving Thorn Park
you turn your blue-grey eyes
towards spending some time
dancing with Ursula
to a little bit of trad jazz
a little pink elephant waltz
under trees taller than houses
where a leafy decadence
lingers in the air.
.
Kenny Knight
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