Category: Poetry

Coronavirus Chronicle VIII

This year it will be on Thursday 13th November. It’s when, in the old days, I used to go out at lunchtime in the City and drink Beaujolais Nouveau until I was sick. This exceptional year it was yesterday; the first day Londoners could go out on the lash in pubs and restaurants since March.

Wartime Reading List

John Colville’s Downing Street Diaries are not what they seem He could be taken to task under the Trade Descriptions Act (1968) as on the first page he “was living in luxury, at least by war-time standards, and basking in the Prime Minister’s favour.”

Poem Exchange

I sent an e mail on the Sabbath; I cast my bread upon the waters. The quote continues “for you will find it after many days”. This makes no investment sense. Chucking a perfectly good crust away and getting a soggy, mouldy, inedible mess back is akin to investing with Neil Woodford. But I digress.

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Categorised as Poetry

A Tale of Two Town Halls

This magnificent building was completed in 1897. It cost £28,000; considered extravagant by its opponents. It fronted onto Brook Green Road and Hammersmith Broadway. It was Hammersmith Town Hall. It was designed in the ornate Italian manner, a style that had been popular for metropolitan municipal architecture since at least the 1860s but which was… Continue reading A Tale of Two Town Halls

Ritz Crackers

Christmas Cracker This poem about Anthony Blunt, would have delighted John Julius Norwich; it surely would have been in his Christmas Cracker. Who’d have guessed it? Blunt a traitor And a homosexualist, Carrying on with tar and waiter – There’s a sight I’m glad I missed. It would earn its place because it comes from Harvest… Continue reading Ritz Crackers

On Box Hill

This is the view from Box Hill in Surrey. It is a short, steepish climb to the 735 foot summit and I was surprised how may people had made it up there until I saw a large car park operated by the National Trust near the top.

Puppy and I

A reader told me of this poem by AA Milne. 

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Categorised as Poetry

Zuleika

You may remember a post about Max Beerbohm some eighteen months ago.

Brain Stimulation

Well here I am in Hammersmith Hospital having my brain stimulated, or perhaps not, as it’s a double-blind study.