Oliver Wingate : writer

Hello from me.

2011-07-14T15:03:00.003+01:00

It's a funny old thing, the life of a writer who specialises in un-writing. There's just too much words in this world and it's a shame that people aren't more careful with them.

Having said which, I present this here site, in which you can rummage through a portfolio of works accumulated over too many years in the advertising and design world. That's under the title Portfolio, surprisingly enough.

Under the title Experi(mental), I boldly upload stuff I've been doing, toying with words, rolling back the frontiers of application technology (as if) and trying to hide my true identity as a digital immigrant.

And then there's Word Play, which is what it says it is, including the Ridictionary, useful for those moments when you get lost for words.

This is technically a blog that's masquerading as a website, set up for me by Henry (qv on the blog), who is missed, loved and thought about every day. Follow the links to other stuff, if you have the stomach for it.

Oh, and below, you can feast your eyes on the horrible realities of this writer's rockface.

If you have been, thanks for visiting.

Pure Recruitment

2011-07-14T14:58:00.001+01:00

Pure Recruiting Solutions: recruitment specialists don't have to be personality-free zones. This, for the brochure front cover.

They liked it so much, they stuck it up on the wall.

Ballymore

2011-04-18T21:09:00.009+01:00

This company has changed what the world looks like. Have a look: http://www.ballymore.co.uk/home

FujiFilm

2010-09-20T14:40:00.008+01:00

It's quite technical stuff, this, but nicely produced by Soup. Well, I think so, anyway. (I would, wouldn't I? I wrote the script.)

Click here to have a look.

Tadpole Computers

2010-07-20T16:04:00.002+01:00

For its fifteen minutes allotted time, Tadpole was famous as the fastest laptop in the world... And then the window closed. This was a DM piece: we left it to shout about itself.

2010-07-16T15:14:00.003+01:00

Click here to send me an email

Credit Insurance Association

2010-07-14T14:55:00.014+01:00

He was a good client, Bryan Squibb at the Credit Insurance Association - he managed to make insurance seem almost sexy. And he gave me a pretty free hand to do the work.

Not so much a brochure cover, more a summary of what they were really about. A spread follows.

And this for a mailing.

Aer Lingus

2010-07-13T17:11:00.005+01:00

Once upon a time, an airline called Ryanair was threatening to launch itself onto the London/Dublin route. This is how Aer Lingus responded.

Spalding Golf

2010-07-13T15:56:00.001+01:00

It was only a little ad. But it was a neat answer to an unbelievably (and unnecessarily) complicated brief.

Europcar Chauffeur Drive

2010-07-13T15:45:00.003+01:00

A campaign to find work for 60 or so blokes hanging around in a smoke-filled garage in Victoria. Those were the days when the concept of shopping was only just taking off.

CV narrative

2010-07-08T17:26:00.011+01:00

Advertising and Design

I started out as a production controller, then became a copywriter, ending up as a Creative Director, devising and writing press, poster, television, cinema and radio advertising, corporate and sales literature, direct mail, merchandising and promotions. Also responsible for receiving, refining and managing client briefs and for presentation of solutions.

1997 onward: Freelance Writer and Communications Consultant

Work for Antenna Audio has included:

2005: audio tour script for RHS gardens, Wisley

2005: audio tour (PDA) script for the Royal Institution

2005: updating audio tour script for Warwick Castle

Work for the Science Museum (NMSI) has included:

2005: film script for Caspian Energy Centre, Azerbaijan (Science Museum Solutions and BP)

2005: text for graphic panels re-interpreting the steam engines

2005: text for graphic panels, Spitfire Exhibition, Battle of Britain 65th anniversary

2004: text for the new Energy Gallery

2004: concept and text for the Dana Centre, winning a D&AD nomination (writing in design)

1993 - 1997: Creative Director, Ware Anthony Rust, Cambridge

Burnham Mustard, Ciba-Geigy Araldite, Harper Collins, Titleist, Typhoon

1990 - 1993: Creative Director, Razor Creative Independent, Suffolk
Aldeburgh Foundation, Credit Insurance Association, Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, Eastern Arts Board

1988 - 1990: Creative Director, Billington Jackson, London

3Com, Fila, Lever Industrial, Majestic Wine Warehouses, Riley, Spalding Sports, Thorn EMI Business Communications

1985 - 1988: Creative Director, Howell Jones Schneider Weaver, London
Aer Lingus, Astor Cruises, Britannia Airways, Eastbourne Tourism & Leisure, Europcar, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, MFI

1982 - 1985: Joint Creative Director, Ware Anthony Rust, Cambridge
Britvic, Green Giant Foods, Tobler Suchard, Watney Mann National Sales

1978 - 1981: Copywriter, Bartlett Ray and Jarvis, Norwich
Barratt Homes, Heatrae Sadia, Jawa-CZ motorcycles, Marconi, Ransomes & Rapier

1976- 1978: Copywriter, Dorland, London
British Leyland, Phoenix Assurance, Triplex Windscreens

1974 - 1976: Copywriter, Geers Gross, London
Bristol-Myers, Cadbury Schweppes, Spillers Homepride, Unicliffe, WD & HO Wills

1972 - 1974: Controller, Junior Copywriter, J. Walter Thompson, London
Access, Berger Paints, Holiday Inns, Spillers

Screenwriting career summary

2007: Developing further projects with Giles Foden

2005: Commissioned to write screen adaptation of “Zanzibar” by Giles Foden

2002: 3rd draft of “Oracle” in development with Red Eye Pictures (aka Gauvain Productions) and Open Road Films, with financial assistance from Scottish Screen

2002: Chosen as member of Script Factory Writer’s Group

2001: First Take Films (Anglia TV) “Storylab” project – one of 8 writers devising and writing an 8 episode Precinct Drama series

2001: Screenplay “Rolling In It” in development with Joanna Wilsher Productions

2001: Rehearsed reading of “Oracle” at Script Factory event, Edinburgh International Film Festival

2001: 2nd draft of “The Oracle of Essex Road” in development with Gauvain Productions, with financial assistance from Scottish Screen

2000: Commissioned to write original play, "The Parfitts’ Progress", for Laxfield Children’s Drama Club: three public performances in November

2000 “The Oracle of Essex Road” in development with Gauvain Productions, with financial assistance from Scottish Screen

1999: Screenplay “The Oracle of Essex Road” Shortlisted for Orange Prize for Screenwriting

1997: Adaptation of The Jungle Book for Laxfield Children’s Drama Club: three public performances in November

Screenwriting training:

2003: Arista Adaptation course, through Screen East

2003: Arista Business of Development course

2002: Euroscript Workshop, France (part-funded by Film Council bursary)

2001: Arista Story Editor Workshop, Denmark (part-funded by Film Council bursary)

2000: Script Reader’s course at The Script Factory

1999: John Truby Advanced Story Structure Course

1999: Writers’ Lab, Raindance

1994: National Film and Television School Short Course Unit: Scriptwriting for Film and Television (Tutor: Colin Tucker)

1990: Robert McKee Story Analysis Course

1989: Robert McKee Story Structure Course

Qualifications:

2007: MA in ‘Writing the Visual’ from Norwich School of Art and Design, course leader George Szirtes.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines

2010-07-08T13:30:00.004+01:00

When you only spend 45 minutes in the air between London and Amsterdam, what's to say?

Wilkins of Tiptree

2010-07-07T16:49:00.001+01:00

Jam for Christmas.

2010-06-16T14:27:00.006+01:00

Sydney Writers' Festival 2010

2010-06-16T12:56:00.009+01:00

After all these years, water under (Sydney) bridges and all that, Mr Melhuish (now of Saatchi Design Sydney) and Mr Wingate resume a collaborative thing on the 2010 campaign for the Sydney Writers' Festival.

And - breaking news here in April 2011 - I'm told we're in the next D&AD for the commercial. Chuffed, or what?

Posters in support:

The District

2010-06-16T12:53:00.002+01:00

A set of splash pages for The District's website.

Science Museum

2010-06-16T12:51:00.005+01:00

The Science Museum's Dana Centre was designed as an ICA of science - where people could meet and talk about science informally. This won a D&AD nomination in 2004 in the Writing for Design category.

This is the reception area.

We even gave them some tables to spill their drinks on.

This was a Science Museum Antenna campaign to draw attention to mobile phone waste. Carter Wong designed.

Royal Mail

2010-06-16T12:48:00.004+01:00

250 years of the History of Science, on the back of a postage stamp (or two).

And these, to celebrate Women of Distinction. Yes, they needed re-writing.

Araldite

2010-06-16T12:47:00.002+01:00

This was a press campaign for Araldite. Fun to do: Art Direction by Julian Melhuish, snaps by Gered Mankovitz.

Typhoon

2010-06-16T12:45:00.001+01:00

This was a campaign for Typhoon Wetsuits: product demonstration on the page. More from the very talented Mr Melhuish.

Paula Yates RIP

2010-06-16T12:43:00.002+01:00

To launch Paula Yates's autobiography - remember her? I do. Fondly. (Brilliant teamwork by J Melhuish and G Mankovitz again.)

Eastbourne

2010-06-16T12:39:00.008+01:00

A poster campaign to reinvent Eastbourne as a weekend place for Londoners. Art Direction by Pete Denton; illustrations by someone really good at illustration (sic); Duncan Sim snapped with a hand-held Linhof (ahem).

More colours

2010-05-10T17:09:00.004+01:00

Sydney Writers' Festival TV

2010-04-23T15:35:00.005+01:00

Fame?

2010-03-29T15:09:00.003+01:00

The Sherpa: my greatest claim to fame - naming the British Leyland van many years ago. Next time you're stuck behind one, struggling up a one-in-ten (let alone a Himalaya), think of me with - erm - fond amusement, or at least forgiveness.

Impossible

2010-03-25T23:43:00.005Z

You’ve left me wondering:
is love worth having
if it isn’t in some way impossible?
You in your gilded birdcage,
me in my scolded doghouse
and neither of us possessed
of the superpower of flight.

But, in spite of the overwhelming odds,
and all the opinions ranged against us,
I still catch myself in the act,
behaving as if this town were Hollywood.

Saturday’s Night

2010-03-25T23:16:00.002Z

I have crept into Sunday morning,
around the rocks of Saturday’s night,
through the back door of one o’clock;
your words have haunted me
all along the wide awaking day
and have put my sleep to sleep.

For more of their kind
I would strip stone towers of their manhood,
cast angels into the deepest dark,
tear up the concrete street city
with my bare, hamfisted hands -
anything - to breathe in once again
what you have thought to say.

The boys in the tree

2010-03-24T23:46:00.004Z

The oak’s in leaf
but it won’t always be.
Where their feet, those boys, take hold,
between the leaf, the acorn
and the new growth of boughs,
will soon slide to nothing.
The seasons know nothing of us
and care less.
The foothold we have is momentary:
if only we could remember this.

Lately

2010-03-09T17:00:00.001Z

Lately, I have found myself
staring at the pattern on the curtain
and wondering if you, too,
would have found the face that stares out
Arcimboldo-like from the trashy
William Morris-lite design,
its nose a swirl of leaves,
an eye some kind of gnarled fruit,
the eyebrow a twist of vine;
and then I know once again
that you’re not really there
to answer stupid questions like this
and I should get up and properly
set my face to another day
without you.

The Latin Quarter

2010-03-04T22:11:00.006Z

A certain place in this bed
offers a nightlife spilling onto the streets,
bars, bistros, nightclubs and girls working
until four in the morning
when the dead marines
overcome the music
and sleep seems like a better idea.

The lingua franca of my Latin Quarter
cannot be found
in your common or garden dictionary;
it takes two to speak this tongue
with the fluency of a you and a me.

The Appliance of Science

2010-03-04T21:07:00.005Z

The attractive qualities of a fridge magnet
can, of course, work in reverse.
What might attract can also repel,
opposites held in the same metal plane,
observing the physical laws laid down for them
and yet defying their emotional logic -
if such a thing can be said.

What we know of each other
may contain nuts;
my love, your revulsion,
perhaps different expressions
of the same thing,
or the same expression
of different things.

Hello from me

2010-03-02T23:11:00.003Z

It's a funny old thing, the life of a writer who'd much rather un-write than write. There's just too much words in this world and it's a shame that people aren't more careful with them.

Having said which, I present this here site, in which you can rummage through poeming, picturing, commercialising and the Ridictionary, useful for those moments when you get lost for words.

Under the title Experi(mental), I boldly upload stuff I've been doing, toying with words, rolling back the frontiers of application technology (as if) and trying to hide my true identity as a digital immigrant.

This is technically a blog that's masquerading as a website, set up for me by Henry (qv), to whom thank yous and loves forever.

Oh, and below, you can feast your eyes on the horrible realities of this writer's rockface. If you have been, thanks for visiting.

The train forever missed

2010-02-15T17:53:00.003Z

She said she thought he wouldn’t mind being dead.
I think he’d mind a lot
as if, after a mad, suicidal dash
cross-country to make up for lost time,
he’d arrived at the breathless station
only to watch the 9.47 of his life
disappear into the mist of its uncertain future,
leaving him standing forever,
cursing on a frozen platform
where the trains no longer call.

In my dreams

2010-02-15T17:40:00.002Z

In the dream that has me,
he throws the ball
and I follow its beautiful arc
leaping in glorious barefoot slowmo
over dunes and marram grass hurdles,
through the jetsam-strewn high tide mark
to execute the perfect airborne catch
by the very very water’s edge,
framed like a champion by the rolling sea
and the lazy turbines applauding in the distance.

I turn to throw the ball back
but he’s no longer there to catch it.

A Letter to Henry

2010-02-15T15:31:00.005Z

And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer,
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way

from Famous Blue Raincoat, Leonard Cohen

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...
... attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...
...I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark
off the Tannhauser Gate...
... all those moments will be lost, in time...
... like tears... in rain..."

from Bladerunner, Ridley Scott

Dear Henry,
In the minutes, hours, days, weeks and months following 12 December 2007, I have felt at times that I’ve been living on a lifeboat. I’ve seen some big seas and some flat calms; I’ve heard strange, unidentifiable sounds in the night, welling up from the deep; I’ve felt the waves throw themselves in desperation onto the beach and then I’ve heard them hiss through gritted teeth as they’re dragged back out to sea again; and every wind on the Beaufort Scale has had something to throw in my face. I have been wet through, I have been dried out; I have been hungry and thirsty. There have been too many high and low tides to remember (although, at a rate of two a day, I could probably count them). And as day has followed night has followed day since that date, I have expected the worst to happen... as if worse could happen. I should have been drowned, at sea; I should have died of exposure or exhaustion, to have my body pecked at, fought over by seabirds; of all the possible outcomes, survival with anything like equilibrium did not seem the most likely.

My sweet, brave, so sorry boy, I am grieving for you and will continue to grieve and mourn for you until my turn comes to die. You leave behind an aching, gaping great hole, never to be filled. Stretching away to the far horizon and beyond, lies the desolate landscape of a life to be lived in some way without you.

But I seem to have made it back to the shore and found safe havens on solid earth. For all that I know this place like the back of my hand, I also know that it’s different and can never look or feel or work the same as before: it’s as if Plate Tectonics has been at work. In spite of the continuing aftershocks, I find myself able to stand up and walk steadily and while I don’t know what comes next, I don’t feel afraid.

In the immediate aftermath, I was swept off my feet by the love, concern and heart-felt sympathy of friends: but at the same time, I knew deep down that this tide of emotion would recede, as it had to, leaving me high and dry with the flotsam and jetsam, to fend for myself. What I found buried in myself was an entirely surprising ability to cope; I had no idea how it got there but I surrendered to it absolutely.

From time to time, I wondered how it might appear to other people. Grief, it turns out, is a very territorial thing – all the people close to you (and plenty from further off) have had to establish their own borders of grief. With some, it’s been an easy thing to share; with others, less so and unwitting trespasses have been neither welcome nor forgiven, I suspect. And there might be nothing so disturbing to people who are plunged into darkness than someone who appears to be resolutely light-emitting: how can it possibly be OK to be OK?

But I didn’t descend into depression, anger or denial, or any of the Stages of Grief so clinically described and prescribed by Kübler-Ross; if anything, your being dead has made me feel more acutely what it means to be alive. Someone said to me “It makes you think about what’s important, about what matters”. I have been thinking about what’s important and what matters and acting on those thoughts.

I have been doing things I would never have done: I talk to complete strangers, I allow my curiosity greater rein; I have taken myself to places I would never have gone to, both physical and cerebral; I have embraced the idea, a doctrine almost, of “why not?”.

That I shouldn’t have needed you to die to do this is a self-evident truth; but we all of us arrive at our personal freedoms in different ways – assuming we get there at all – and if this is what I do as a result of what you’ve left me, then so be it: actually more, much more, than so be it. During all of this, I feel you smiling down on me with love and affection and approval, radiant, buoyant, potent. You yourself were much constrained by your own perimeter fencing and knew all too well how it feels to deny your first instinct and to allow what you imagined to be superior considerations to lie in the way. I have found that all it takes is to step lightly over the tripwire; the confines are metaphors of our own construction. We imagine them to be there, knowing in that dreamlike way that to step over is to take a desperate, don’t-look-down risk. It’s illusion, the stuff of nightmares.

So I haven’t taken up bungee jumping, paragliding, or snake charming. I have merely walked on, blindly trusting that the ground will come up to meet my feet as I go. And if I’ve come to regard that as part of your gift to me, how on earth do I, can I, could I thank you for it?

I realise it breaks a taboo to say this, but that doesn’t make it any less true: it’s good, this grief. I wouldn’t have sought it under any circumstances; it’s unthinkable to welcome it. But now that I have had it thrust upon me, I must make something of it: a bit like the swimless man who falls overboard and has to learn either to float (and quite quickly: not much time for lengthy analysis) or give up all hope and sink. My swimming turns out to be less than elegant, Henry, but it’s good enough. And strangely, it has conferred upon me more than just the ability to stay afloat: the water begins to feel like a home of sorts.

But the world without you is a very different place. I feel like an immigrant in my own home, an amputee somehow learning once again how to operate the machine tools of his trade: in my case, this is how it must feel to learn to write with my left hand, having lost my right. Everything is superficially the same, but actually feels alien. Eventually, of course, the immigrant learns a new language, a new landscape; the amputee learns how to work the levers, gains a new operating system and I will acquire sufficient dexterity to write with my left hand. The wound will heal, the waters close over and become calm, the echoes will die out. But that is in the superficial world, the one which everyone can see; in the hidden world of “without you”, the wound remains exposed, the waters stormy, the echoes regular and, on occasion, deafening.

Since you’ve been gone, I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve come up to me and said how much I remind them of you. I feel this acute sense of bursting pride that people see in me so much of you: it’s a strong cocktail of feeling proud, honoured, humbled, surprised, blessed. Like me, you weren’t a saint, but you at 24 years of age were a better man than I ever was at the same age, let alone at 54 years of age. Would it be too mawkish, too much of a cliché, altogether too Walt Disney, that I should somehow see in you something of a rôle model? That’s not for a moment to suggest I must be more like you. But I feel quite strongly that there was – is – a current that flows directly from you that I am only too happy to drift in, feel comfortable to be caught up in, without quite knowing where it leads or how or why.

It’s not just losing you that’s so sad. It’s also what has been lost to you – the rest of your life, which was sitting there waiting for you to occupy it in some way. It’s now some sort of surplus: you fully intended to use it, you would have figured it out, I know, but now that you can’t, what’s to be done with it? It seems bizarre to leave it sitting there – a spare – an empty vessel running parallel to actual lived-in lives like one of those riderless horses in the Grand National which always win because they’ve rid themselves of their tiresome riders. Nobody can live the life you’ve left behind for you; and nobody else can assume the multiple rôles that you had: but I have this sense that there’s a kind of inverted vicariousness in it – that there’s a leaf to be taken out of your book that I, at least, could learn something from; not to live a life for you, but from you. And the one proviso would be that it’s a life that you might have approved of.

Am I trying to keep you alive? Is this a creeping form of denial out of the Kübler-Ross handbook? I don’t think so; I feel your presence in my head, my heart and – yes, sorry – in my guts. I talk to you every day: I say good mornings and good nights to you; I ask your opinion on all sorts of things, I wonder what you would say or do. I hear your laugh – the laugh of genuine pleasure and also the laugh of complete derision. I wish I could imitate it aloud... but that would go horribly wrong. I feel your presence, it’s you and it’s palpable.

But you are dead, Henry – or, as I prefer to put it in my own semantic way, you have been killed. As far as I am concerned, there’s no room for any other fact. It was nobody else’s fault that you lost control of your car on that icy road, driving to your grandfather’s funeral, and met your violent, sudden, but mercifully instant death. And took poor Kirsten with you.

While I’m in the business of tinkering with taboos, I might as well address another, get myself hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. Henry, I’m so glad you didn’t survive as a brain-damaged victim. You made your exit with emphatic determination: your death was instantaneous, as they said at the time. That, of course, is only a technicality. You will have known only too well that you’d lost control of the car. In the few – the very few – seconds between losing it and losing yourself, I’m pretty certain you would have been – well, quite pissed off, actually. But I also have no doubt that you didn’t see it coming, that grotesque, bastarding, avenging length of steel pole.

But, for me, it would have been a bigger tragedy if you had survived in a persistent vegetative state. (I remember that we once speculated together which vegetable it would be better to be: is it invention on my part to think that you chose ladies’ fingers, while I, less wittily, chose rutabaga?) The idea that you might still be here, comatose, dribbling, incontinent (doubly, or trebly), utterly disabled in every function, your beautiful face lolling in a disfiguring way, is too awful to contemplate. How long would I have agonised before slipping round the back of the life support machine and pulling out every plug I could find, with your wholehearted but unspoken approval?

No, you spared me, us, that. Indeed, you also spared me, us, what poor Kirsten’s family had to experience and endure: the long dash from Ipswich to Addenbrookes hospital, the brainstem tests, the hope dwindling and yet not quite ready to be wholly abandoned, cruel reality stalking it in the too-brightly lit institutional corridors with their corporate paint scheme, wheely trolleys and trained bereavement staff lurking in the wings, vultures waiting for the kill. No, you went for full impact, maximum shock, total annihilation.

(The morning after I wrote the above, I found a lengthy piece in the paper about an Italian father whose daughter was injured in a road accident – her car slid on black ice, Henry, same as you, but she met a lamppost. She has been in a PVS (yes, a glorious abbreviation – pick the semiotics out of that) for ten years, no less, and her father is now trying to get them to withdraw the life support so that she can die in peace. The ghastly insult added to his injury is that both Berlusconi and the morbid clerics in the Vatican are attempting to change Italian law to make it illegal for life support to be withdrawn, in some spurious exercise of moralising zeal. In addition to this, the father was asked by the journalist if he had photographs of the girl in her coma: he did, but refused to show them, saying that she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see her like that: the exact same response I had when we were asked at the hospital if we wanted to see you... How angry you would have been with us, and what a mistake it would have been to have had a final farewell image burnt indelibly in our minds of your sweet face so brutally, utterly disfigured by that wicked piece of steel. You would not have forgiven us that.)

Henny, in my darkest, most sullen or most other moments, I allow myself to believe I should have done a better job of dying before you. Here’s the text of a horribly foreshadowing poem I wrote well before the shuddering event of your death, before I came to understand, or appreciate you as a brother:

The brother I never had
would have died before me
to show me how it’s done,
like sharpening a penknife
or vaulting a gate;
but in his demonstration
of this dying art
there would have been
an undying truth:
I could never have done it
as well as him.

The saying goes that no father should have to bury his son: it flies in the face of what we comfortably like to think of as the natural order of things, in which an older generation has the grace to make its exit before the next – age before beauty. It makes exceptions, however grudgingly, however tragic they may be: murder, war, illness, suicide… accident.

Would I turn the clock back and offer myself up in your place? Of course I would – and this is not to engage in idle sentiment, speculation or metaphysics, nor is it the empty offer of self-sacrifice. It’s simply to recognise, pragmatically, that the thirty years I had over you should more properly have belonged to you than to me. Just think what you could have done with them: what larks: the life you could have had, should have had. Just look at what I’ve done with them... I can honestly say that I’ve done nothing with them that you couldn’t have done so, so much better.

But there it is. Cruel, heartless, bastard fate.

You have left me with a certain fuck-the-world recklessness. Death holds no fear for me, although I’m as fearful of pain as anyone would be. But then, there’s always Max with a shotgun, Dignitas, or morphine... and Macmillan nurses.

Henry, you and I were never given to solemnity for very long, were we? Flippancy was more our style, however irritating that can be. I once looked it up in the dictionary: “unbecoming levity” was the definition, a tonal rap over the knuckles that might have been used by an exasperated Headmaster. If you suffered from excess flippancy, I have to recognise that I must bear some of the responsibility for it, as I suffer from terminal flippancy – it’s in the genes. My first instinct is to apologise for it – but why? There are those who would suggest that flippancy is an attempt to wriggle out of taking things as seriously as they should be or, worse, a form of defence, an attempt to keep emotions at arm’s length. Well, I hope they’re comfortable in their humourless hair shirts. Flippancy, for us, liberally peppered with freshly ground cynicism, was – is – all part of the jeux d’esprit.

I remember you listening patiently while I banged on about my theory of cynicism – that if you scratch away at the surface of a cynic for long enough, you’ll uncover an idealist, or a romantic, or both; the cynicism is assumed as a protection against too much disappointment with the real world. But actually, it’s also true that it’s fun and funny, fun and games; for us, it was a playground, with words and ideas being the big, brightly coloured bouncy balls that we could fearlessly and harmlessly hurl at each other. And in any case, cynicism is listed as a form of humour in Fowler’s Modern English Usage, so it must be so.

Flippancy and cynicism: they brought us closer together and it’s a privilege to have shared them, played with them, with you, even though we both knew how much and how often those qualities can be misunderstood.

And now, here I am without you, with the loss of you so keenly on my mind and heavy on my heart and still I have to laugh and play the jeux d’esprit, keep them going, an endless round of pass the parcel – the current, again. I manage to make that sound like a burden, but it’s not. It comes as naturally as a breeze, unbidden, unforced; I surrender to it easily, perhaps because I feel I’m not doing it alone. “This dear, playful spirit was only just out of sight, exploring the jungle ahead of me...” a friend has written of the loved man she lost. At the risk of adding yet more to this metaphor-laden piece, I agree. And we like metaphors, don’t we?

The truth is, you bastard, it’s so much easier for you to be dead than it is for me to do without you. People have been very kind: I have been told how well I’ve coped, how strong I’ve been, how I have faced this ordeal with courage (although I never did pluck up enough courage to call your mobile to hear your sweet voice delivering its witty message).

A few people have been keen to look for or offer sources of consolation on my behalf. I do my best to receive them with outward good manners and keep my feeling of disdain to myself: the consolation being offered, I suspect, is not exclusively for my benefit. Luckily, not one person has taken refuge behind their God to offer thanks for your life and to console me with the thought that you’ve gone to join the heavenly throng; I say luckily, because I think that would have been the moment when my good manners would have abandoned me and a horribly gruesome massacre (chainsaw, I think, over Samurai sword) would have ensued.

As for therapy… I’m afraid that just wouldn’t do. A listening ear that tells me what I’m feeling is “normal”? How consoling would that feel? Nothing about this is “normal”: that goes straight back to the grieving-by-numbers prescribed by Kübler-Ross.

In the long term, the coping that’s been going on in the background of my un-, sub- or super-conscious mind may catch up with me. Or it may turn out that it has simply been a further instalment of the gift you’ve left me: when I think of you, sweet boy, I simply feel stronger. Just that. Can we add it to the debt I already owe you?

You might have noticed that I have not said goodbye to you, Hen. I never will. In many ways, I feel I haven’t yet finished saying hello and have a sense that that alone could last a lifetime – sadly, mine now, not yours. That’s not to hold you back, nor myself. I won’t say goodbye because we’re not done with each other and I neither expect nor want to be. There is unfinished business to do, business with the living world, and I need your help to do that. And I’m not prepared to consign you to history. I can hear the therapy community gathering up their pens to write “but you must move on”. What they will never know or understand is that this is moving on: it’s just that I choose to do it with you, instead of without you.

So, goodbyes have no place here, Henry. You are with me, inside me, around me and above me, the smile in my heart, the laugh in my head and the voice in my guts, always and forever. Or at least until I’m done with this living thing. Time will drift on through the occasionally so so long days, the seconds skipping minutehood into hours, days, weeks, months, years. And there you are, unageing, forever stopped at 24, while I must struggle on for who knows how long. If such a thing can happen and we actually meet again, I know I’ll recognise you. I just wonder if I’ll be recognisable to you, or for that matter to myself. I promise to do my best.

I write this with a love as eternal as I can make it, with all the feeling, admiration and respect I can summon, my darling Henry: you are and will remain always, for as long as forever is, my boy, my son, my friend, my brother. And I will remain yours. In the solitude, seclusion and without-you-ness of the life I now find myself living, the things you’ve given me have taken on a significance that’s immeasurable, beyond extraordinary. I only hope that I can be man and boy, friend and brother enough to deserve them.

Your loving Dad,
Oliver

qwertyuiop game

2010-02-15T14:57:00.004Z

Ohhh, the things writers get up to (well, this one, anyway) - anything rather than actually write. In this highly immersive, somewhat addictive game, you make up as many words as you can, using only the top row of keys. Look away now if you want to have a go...

trippy typewriter property proper pert quoit quite queer equip repertoire pretty quit quitter witty pier quiet writer write writ outer pouter pout poetry poet pity pewter pour topper tipper pepper tower power quire were tourer tour weir wittier outre potter twerp root router rout route yeti requite potty pottier twitter twit tort piety trip tripper pique pierrot porter port require pyre queue tripe query quote wept rope torpor wort wetter wipe wiper ripper trope worry wiry type trite wire your yore ripe true truer troupe trooper troop terrier terror territory tryer rotter totter titter torque pipe piper poop pope rower ropey retire pure purity petty propriety tyre tire tore turret rupture pore poor poorer retort tree tote tout putter trout prop europe utter prototype putty perry priority prior priory tory retype repot toupee ewer erupt repute prey quotiety puttee puppy puppet purport peppery equerry weeper weep twee tier poppy pottery repertory repetiteur report reporter prow equity tetter tutor uppity puree torture pipette teet teeter tottery treetop upper rote popery trio tripo trotter peep yuppie etiquette toque output tepee rotor eerie eyrie (popeye) tiptop retro pirouette proprietor outwit petite wrote rewire yoyo perpetuity yurt

Random

2010-02-15T12:39:00.010Z

A street in Norwich yields a new escapee from the land of the White Goods.

Does one of the dreariest towns in the North deserve such an exalted name? We thought not, but the sign was well embedded in concrete - and anyway, we were too scared to get out of the car.

A fridge magnet that made a break (and a plea) for freedom.

A friend I made last summer. Click on the pic for actual size.

From an Observer magazine front cover: gingerbaby. All these years, we were right.

Lorem ipsum

2010-02-15T12:32:00.000Z

This is my own home made Lorem Ipsum. It almost makes sense.

To conform to first aftermaths without the principle argument gains space over permanent trial. Traducing sensation-contracts eats away at yesterday’s sojourn within matter-blasting threads of Tuesday. Confirmation of “would like to meet” perceptive tropes rests in muscular paradoxes of dwelling expedience; quantum logic defies circumstantial scanning in green-decked afternoons, performing tertiary municipalities in aggregation of Machiavellian storms. Observational disturbance of emergent forms is the exalted carapace of unctuous time: the towering concerns of middle-minded horizons delegate their first-hand biopsy to be suspended in transoms. Secondary tumults have no trace – pliant developments herald converse worlds of Newtonian surrogacy; peer group passions terrorise mutations and always will. Ecto-mediums sustain global tremors, useless Saturdays undo foresight, terminal constraints bolster universal partition and vice versa; no obliquity can countenance craft. Survival turns empty when faced with supplanted manifestations; the past is corrugated, the present corroded, the future coaxial. The learning curve of essence is the totem of paradigms, a colossus of breathtaking immediacy; the diurnal is proscriptive of marginal themes. Indeed, the eye of the beholder is subsumed in a preternatural detumescence; colloquy has no place in these hallowed cloisters of magnanimity. Correspondingly, the quod erat demonstrandum of our imagination is hot-wired into a confusion of objectives; no version of reality can be left unturned. And what results can be anticipated from such universal quorums? Only further interrogation will display the symptoms; all orthodoxies are redundant, the will has no trace. The sequence of such changes is only apparent after radical re-assessment of long-held nostrums: “to find as you will is to acquiesce in silence”. Ownership is the key to the intransitive; the diacritical is paramount.

You, it seems, cannot escape

2010-02-14T20:36:00.004Z

You, it seems, cannot escape
my thoughts for long.
When released, they hunt you down
and ask such sweet questions
which now must go unanswered.

It’s a sorrowful business, this
and in spite of my best endeavours
I cannot train my thoughts to look elsewhere.
They have your scent,
a trail across the broken grass where
your foot fell as you walked away
and they’re so unwilling to let drop
the innocent pursuit of a lost
and a once and a still loved one.

A tree for Henry

2010-02-14T19:32:00.002Z

A Henry tree that we've stolen from Dunwich Forest. A gorgeous spreading oak that we must have walked past hundreds of times. A place to visit, to tie something onto, or just to sit around, within, beneath, beside. And wonder why. With everlasting love.

You're so so welcome to visit it. Thing is, I've tried to mark it on a Google map, but this tree doesn't have a postcode, so I can't. You'll have to send me an email to ask for directions.

My still and forever loved boy

2010-02-14T17:55:00.011Z

Even now, I have to take my courage in both hands to do this.

My son Henry, a golden, sweet, much much loved boy of 24, was killed in a road accident on 12 December 2007.

He leaves such a gaping hole, such an echoing emptiness, that nothing will ever manage to fill it. What follows here is for him: he was at the beginning of a writing career; but he could also draw (see bottom of this post), think about stuff, charm anyone (but not in a bad way) and, above all, make everyone laugh.

I loved him and liked him; and in return, I felt loved and liked - but also forgiven - by him. It doesn't get much better than that. Even now, there isn't an hour of any day or night that I don't miss him: my boy, my son, my friend, my brother (the one I never had - if you want irony, read the poem "My brother", written long before - it's in Poemology on the blog).

If you're still curious - or whatever - I've also posted the text of a little book I've made, called "A Letter to Henry". But be warned - it's a long read.

This is Hen with Nat, the love of his life.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the (savagely) edited text of a newspaper report (29 March 2008) on the inquest.

"EVERY road in Suffolk will undergo a safety review after an inquest revealed the deaths of two young people could have been prevented if roadside fencing had not been in place.

At an inquest in Ipswich yesterday into the deaths of Kirsten Duffus, 19, and Henry Wingate, 24, Suffolk County Council admitted the roadside post and rail fences - of which there could be thousands across the county - are “a problem”. The impact of the car hitting the fence - which was protecting a drainage ditch - resulted in a metal pole puncturing the cockpit of the car.

Kirsten and Henry were travelling to Henry's grandfather's funeral at Ipswich Crematorium on December 12 last year when the Renault Clio left the road at about 10.15am near Ashbocking.

Also in the car was Henry's younger brother Max, who was Kirsten's boyfriend, and Henry's girlfriend Natalie Scott. They both escaped with minor injuries.

Henry was pronounced dead at the scene while Kirsten, who lived in Burgate, died at Addenbrooke's Hospital the following day."

Both Max and Nat have been so brave. Somehow, we're holding the line.

I can add now, in early 2010, that Suffolk County Council has apparently completed the survey, but has given no commitment to actually doing anything. In the meantime, the council continues to erect new steel rod and concrete post barriers.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a picture of Max and his much, much loved Kirsten:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What follows are some poems and stuff Henry wrote. I'm so proud of having them on this site.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Foundations

Relations are a shady deal if left
to themselves.
feit breeds counterfeit until clear
from wall to wall,
the foundations disappear.

it’s all too hard to climb down,
to back down
without sight,
push onwards, upwards,
to a leap and a flight

or is it a push? it’s hard to know which one
wants
& which one needs.
they certainly don’t; so tired,
pressing eyes against their grey glass seeing
no actions – only reactions

in the balance and i take no part
(my scales not being what
they were).
i’ve been led, now i am lead.
toxic & inert exacting pressure only
downward,
hoping to press back to the foundations.

Henry Wingate, from Not Expecting Fish
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next pieces come from Henry's own blogspot - I suppose it's OK to salvage it from there, a piece at a time, as I suspect these things turn to virtual dust unless someone visits them from time to time: perhaps to lay flowers or just to remember. You could try, if you're interested, to visit it on www.i-say-we-flip-for-it.blogspot.com - there should be a link on the right.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 06, 2006

For the second time in 24 hours I find myself addressing a silent and invisible audience. Also for the second time, I worry about two things. First, will anyone read this or is it a wordy piss in the wind headed unavoidably for the easily stained crotch of my ego? Second, will I mess up on something technologically simple, so simple in fact that when my error is noticed people will literally laugh themselves shitless, causing irreparable soiling of internet cafe seats everywhere?
Testicles. This is my official line as of now, so for any explanations, enquiries, FAQs or further complications please refer yourself back to the previous sentence. That is all.

On a lighter and possibly less defensive note, here's a stupid poem.

It's like a morgue in here...

There is a ghost in the house.
It hangs around
In the breath between vacuums.
Ask to help and
You only get grimed smiles,
A nicotine sigh.

It has no form and will appear
At the worst moments,
though may be there at better ones.
This can be disconcerting.

If only they featured things like this
On Attenborough or Crime Watch,
So when they appeared in real life we
Could identify, admire and appreciate
Before chasing it out with loud noises
and tricyclics.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I said he could draw: this is an unfinished, freehand drawing he did; very Tim Burtonesque.

Underground

2010-02-14T16:40:00.002Z

Once in a day

2010-02-12T12:25:00.002Z

Once in a day
when life is longing
we sit beneath a roaring sun
and play with the hours
never noticing the hands
on the dandelion clock
ticking us off.

A still life

2009-04-28T17:24:00.001+01:00

The great unwritten lies within,
locked away in the incense cedar,
haunting the graphite darkness.

Fabulous oeuvres wait to emerge:
stories to melt the stone cold hearts of planets,
prose to win over a human race,
poems to lavish on a bronze princess,
tales so tall, they scrape the sky;
and all it will take is a few simple strokes
of Hard Black abandon
and a life that's anything but still.

Killing love

2009-04-28T16:42:00.007+01:00

How shall I kill off my love for you?

Shall I blow it to pieces with Semtex
in an improvised roadside device?
Or bury it alive in the garden,
with a patio over its face?

Shall I strip it naked and gas it,
removing the gold from its teeth?
Or behead it and chop it to pieces
and scatter them over the heath?

I might kill it by running it over
or fill it with stones till it sinks.
I want to be brutal and ruthless
I don’t care, now, what anyone thinks.

Let me run amok and terrorise it –
can you have a massacre of one? –
I’m thinking Columbine, Hungerford, Dunblane:
but – I forgot – I don’t have a gun.

Should I drive it to Eastbourne, I mean Beachy Head,
and push it over the cliff?
Or sever its carotid artery
and watch it bleeding to death?

I could throw it from the top of a building
or hang it with rope from a tree;
I could lace its food with cyanide:
I want it to suffer like me.

Whatever I do, I have to be certain
that it’s dead before I move on;
the love for you that possessed me
cannot be allowed to live on.

The Attraction of Opposites

2009-03-10T16:59:00.006Z

Headlights

2009-01-23T15:48:00.011Z

Flushed with the "success" of today's earlier posting, here's another. It's called Headlights and it soooo nearly gets there.

Tense

2009-01-23T13:13:00.007Z

This is something of an experiment. But does it work?

Well, almost; given that this started life as a PowerPoint poem, and then went into Keynote, and then QuickTime and then became an MP4 upload, it's done OK. At least you get the idea. It ends up a bit small, the edits aren't as smooth as they should be and the soundtrack has lost its elegant fade at the end - oh and you need good eyes to see the small titles. But, I admit that I'm proud of myself for overcoming the horrible application software and getting it out there.

Sleepless

2009-01-21T16:51:00.000Z

It’s three in the morning and I’m looking
at the insides of my eyelids
where a five barred gate leads onto the reedbeds
stretching all the way to the lighthouse.

But what I actually want are highlands,
with proper heather, rocks and scree
with the odd deer or highland cattle
to give the scene a natural animality.

Instead, my mind’s eye gives me
a hopeless compromise to choose:
odd deer and highland cattle in the reedbeds
or a lighthouse in the middle of Glencoe.

I put that sleep down somewhere and I can’t find it now;
I’ve tried telling myself some poems, but then
I have to turn the light back on
to find a pen to write them down.

In the morning, I don’t quite understand them,
but things look different.

We felt lost

2009-01-21T16:40:00.001Z

We felt lost and we went down
to the seagully sea
to see if we’d been
washed up at high tide
beside the Javex bottle,
the left foot flip flop
and the cuttlefish bone.

But no such luck:
I think we may have foundered
beyond the reach of everyday tides
and now we’ll have to wait
for a new blue moon:
I hope we get the high water
and not the hell.

Launderette

2008-12-17T17:22:00.006Z

Three coins-worth to go.
The time could be better spent than
watching the rough and tumble of clothes
waving and drowning
in a hot grey soup.

Soon, after opening the door, all
condensed with heat and vigour, shirts
will fall out, exhausted,
arms clasped round trouser legs,
pleading for them not to walk out.
Socks avert their gaze, turn in on themselves,
embarrassed at the display of
such sentimentality. Under
pants and t-shirts pretend to be each other,
the precursor to cross-dressing,
and a pillowcase sneezes, sensitised
to the powder.

The soul goes out of your clothes
in the launderette, lost and wasted,
washed away to the cold coast.
And I will have to wear it back in again:
the soul being the soil of the body.

There are times

2008-12-17T16:16:00.002Z

There are times when
I’d like to take a poet to bed,
to have my thoughts undressed,
my syntaxes kissed
and my thighs caressed
with the soft, slender, green-fingered tips of verbiage.

There’d be honeyed metaphors all around me,
wild euphemisms strewn at my feet,
vernacular syllables in gorgeous flavours,
freshly plucked French similes, climbing hyperboles
with their exquisite tendrils of phrase and fable,
colloquial shoots and bracts.

If I give you paper and pen,
shall we poem the night together?

The Ghost of a Touch

2008-12-17T15:26:00.009Z

I pick up the radio.
Where my thumb always goes has left a dirty mark
and if repeated often enough and long enough,
it would wear down the surface metal
like the action of centuries of feet
across a stone threshold, or hands on a stained cupboard door,
the touching presence of ghosts.

(I have often wondered why the successive glare of headlights
shouldn’t leave some lasting mark on a village wall;
but such is light that I suppose
it exerts no friction.
There’s a small disappointment in that.)

Is the same true, I wonder, of your skin?
If I visit the same place often enough and long enough,
would I not leave some small trace,
the tiniest, faintest wearing away of the epidermis,
a sign of my repeated presence there,
the gentle impression of my skin on your skin?

In years to come, thousands of years hence,
the forensic anthropologists would examine
the evidence, the rock-painted signature of my touch,
stroke their beards and nod:
“Someone was here”.

Birds

2008-12-17T15:06:00.004Z

Give me your common or garden bird any day –
a twerpy Sparrow or songy Blackbird –
in place of the salmon Corncrake or the champagne Chaffinch.
I like the rubbish birds, the motorbiking Ravens
and the pecky Chickens;
the others are too stuck up for me,
preening themselves in the pages of bird books,
admiring themselves through the twitcher’s lens,
all too aware of their lah-di-dah ornithology.
It ruffles my feathers to think that a London Pigeon,
a gawky, grey, city tramp, panhandling Trafalgar Square,
is regarded as a lesser spotted citizen
of the kingdom of the air
than a Kingfisher –
however much I’m into turquoiserie.

Much loved, sorely missed

2008-04-11T12:35:00.034+01:00

My never-to-be-forgotten boy Henry, who died so sorrily, so sadly on 12 December 2007. Missed, missed, missed with every day that somehow passes.

Just click on the Much loved, sorely missed title at the top and you'll go to a longer post on my blog.

True Colours

2007-11-22T16:20:00.003Z

Who's lying here - the colour of the words or the words of the colour?

Why should visual artists have all the fun? Do writers (let’s not call them verbal artists) have to remain at their grammatical grindstone and never get out the crayons and drawing paper?

I don’t think so. I actually think there’s too much words these days and I’m rather keen on a thing I call unwriting. That leads me to look at what properties words have beyond their apparent meaning.

These six canvases are the work of a writer who’s as interested in playing around with the visual quality of words as a sculptor might be interested in playing around with a lump of clay; and few words could be better suited to this purpose than the names we have (or think we have) for colours.

Made in Adobe Illustrator, printed by inkjet onto prepared canvas, 900 x 900mm. First exhibited at Cotton’s Yard, April 2006. And then in the Art Loan scheme at the canteen of Mills and Reeve Solicitors, Norwich.

Grease

2007-10-11T15:58:00.004+01:00

He works the dodgems at the fair
and she is sure he slicks his hair
with the same machine grease
that speeds the dizzy cars
with such an electric relish.

To the strains of Connie Francis
– or was it Alma Cogan? –
he jumps onto the back of her car
to take her 1/6d;
but she knows she would give anything
to feel those mechanical hands on her waist,
embraced in a moment of suspended stillness,
stolen from the brashness of it all.

It is in his honour that she wins
two goldfish and takes them home
in a plastic bag.

Of that time, the goldfish -
blessed with a memory span of seconds -
would have remembered nothing;
she, cursed with memories spanning
all the empty, teddy boy years,
remembers every last, sweet, greasy moment
as if it really happened.

The swimmer

2007-07-09T16:38:00.001+01:00

They find his shoes and a pile of clothes
just above the high tide line,
the sins of his footprints
long since washed away
by the absolving water.

It is assumed he has drowned,
a fool to the foaming waves,
a bold, if pathetic farewell
written on the sea.

So they never see the naked swimmer emerge
after the waters had broken,
borne by the current down the coast;
he dresses in the fresh life he’d stashed
behind a fisherman’s shed
and walks off to a place
where he might, some day,
enjoy his long, last love
aloud and allowed

Headlights

2007-07-09T16:34:00.000+01:00

(A World History of Late Arrivals Since Last Wednesday)

The headlights penetrate the empty rooms
of a cottage, unshuttered, but closed to the night,
and so don’t illuminate the girl
draped like Lauren Bacall
against the Hollywooden gloss of the door,
cool as can be and waiting
waiting and waiting for me.

How I could have hoped she’d still be there I have no idea;
but the daylight faded more than seven hours ago
and she’s more than given up on me,
reading into my non-appearance
A World History of Late Arrivals Since Last Wednesday (Volume XI).

The motor whispers that it’s time to move on:
so I change the radio wavelength,
release the clutch and
crunch the gears to climb the hill
and put the reluctant distance between us.

The miles that pass have nothing to say
and no light to throw
on the disappointment I feel
at the wheel of this,
my last chance Toyota saloon.

Commercial works

2007-07-09T14:45:00.032+01:00

Click on the images to make them bigger.

Personal work

2007-07-05T14:52:00.002+01:00

GRANNY

After he died, she worked in a charity shop
and cheerfully volunteered to have
a fling with the sub-postmistress.

Had she won the Lottery,
it would not have changed her life:
he had left her “comfortable”
she had no use for holidays
and she knew she could never have had him back
neither for love nor money.

GUILTY
It’s as if everyone in the village
had picked up their lives
from the shelves and networks
and taken to the hills, fled;
where they stood has turned red.

Soon, it will be dark
and under its cover
we will repatriate ourselves in their place
and laugh at the solemn moon
who witnessed it all
but drew the curtains
and said nothing.

HANDY MAN

He only came to double her glazing
but stayed to fix the holes in her life
where the weather crept in
and played havoc with her self-esteem.

With his spirit level,
he converted her loft to a pagan faith,
and rendered her speechless with his crazy paving;
steadily, he raised her pain threshold
and helped to cement relations
with her family and friends.

In the fullness of time, he found himself
taking root in her vegetable patch:
now she will live happily ever after
making soup with his bones.

HEADLIGHTS
(A World History of Late Arrivals Since Last Wednesday)

The headlights penetrate the empty rooms
of a cottage, unshuttered, but closed to the night,
and so don’t illuminate a girl
draped like Lauren Bacall
against the Hollywooden gloss of the door,
cool as can be and waiting
and waiting and waiting for me.

How I could have hoped she’d still be there I have no idea;
but this stage has been dark for all of seven hours
and she’s more than given up on me,
reading into my non-appearance
A World History of Late Arrivals Since Last Wednesday.

My car whispers that it’s time to move on:
I crunch the gears and climb the hill
and put the reluctant distance between us.
The miles that pass have nothing to say
on the disappointment I feel
at the wheel of this, my last chance saloon.

HER PANTS

The skin of her teeth
brings out the philanthropist in me
but the seat of her pants
drives me to despair.

I don’t mind a close shave
but that’s too close for comfort.

INTOXICATED
Having staggered to the gutter,
I can only see the stars:
no virgins, twins, crabs or bulls
but the sweet constellation of your face,
the smile on me – how you smile on me! –
that’s made me too drunk to walk
a straight line back into any other life.

LADYBRID
The ladybird on the table lamp
pauses and counts the cost
of the spots on her back.
There’s no such thing
as a gentlemanbird as
far as she’s concerned;
better to flex her wingcases
and fly away home,
whatever home might bring.

MY BROTHER

The brother I never had
would have died before me
to show me how it’s done,
like sharpening a penknife
or vaulting a gate;
but in his demonstration
of this dying art
there would have been
an undying truth:
I could never have done it
as well as him.

STORM
Thunder and lightning hit the streets and –
those sodium cowards who never permit
the dead to sleep nor, for that cold, dark matter,
the living – the street lights
blink on and off in useless surprise.

The church bells ring all four quarters
and a solitary, redundant one, as if to compete,
but the thunder steals the show:
which of these the voice of God?

I know she hates the lightning,
fears the ghastly flare that bleaches the fields
beyond the empty framing windows:
I should have been there
but cannot be.

So we are linked only by the jagged rips of light
and the wet lanes under the prowling thunder;
keeping low, the heart caught in the crossfire,
the faithless, like me, are prised from their beds
to sit, to watch, to admire, to regret.

The storm, a caravan of circus tricks, passes on;
the laid waste streets lie scrubbed and clean,
but not me, not me.

SUICIDE GIRL

Poor, poor sweet suicide girl
they never saw it coming
but I did, I did:
I saw something lost in your eyes
never looking likely to be found
and the sad and sorry samaritan guy
was taking another call;
so you crept away to your private precipice
where only heaven could see you
and you made your amends incarnate.

THE HOTEL

In a hotel room, on the other side of an ocean,
I imagine myself retiring to bed, local time;
the starched white bathrobe falls to the floor
and I pull back the covers
to find you
’ve eaten the management’s goodnight chocolates –
yours and mine –
as a prelude to a night in executive class.

You unwrapped my twisted paper,
you pulled apart my foiled wrapping,
you sank your teeth through my hard coating
and you sucked out my soft centre.

What are you going to devour next?

THE LUCK

She never knew what hit her
and it was over
as soon as it began, almost:
a blinding, startling moment
that pushed her over the edge,
from madness to reason.

Some people get all the luck.

THE MUSIC

She plays the cello
"like an angel"
to quote the Daily Telegraph;
but I can tell you something
they won't be publishing
in this week's pages:
when I see her on the stage,
playing that thing
held so softly between her thighs,
the music stirs thoughts in me:
thoughts that are distinctly News of the World.

THE SWIMMER

They find his shoes and a pile of clothes
just above the high tide line,
the sins of his footprints
long since washed away
by the absolving water.

It is assumed he has drowned,
a fool to the foaming waves,
a bold, if pathetic farewell
written on the sea.

So they never see the naked swimmer emerge
after the waters had broken,
borne by the current down the coast;
he dresses in the fresh life he’d stashed
behind a fisherman’s shed
and walks off to a place
where he might, some day,
enjoy his long, last love
aloud and allowed.

THE WINE

He forgets to ask
before she leaves this morning
whether it was the Muscadet,
the pillow, or the heart
that did the talking last night:
last night, when she decided.

There is still wine in the glass
but who will drink it now?

WHEN WE FIRST MEET (a window poem)

WHEN YOU SENT (a window poem)

Suicide girl

2007-05-17T14:28:00.000+01:00

Poor, poor sweet suicide girl
they never saw it coming
but I did, I did:
I saw something lost in your eyes
never looking likely to be found
and the sad and sorry samaritan guy
was taking another call;
so you crept away to your private precipice
where only heaven could see you
and you made your amends incarnate.

Ridictionary

2007-05-17T13:00:00.007+01:00

Click on the words to read the lines.

When you sent (a window poem)

2007-03-02T16:54:00.000Z

When we first meet (a window poem)

2007-03-02T16:13:00.000Z

Storm

2007-03-02T16:06:00.002Z

Thunder and lightning hit the streets and –
those sodium cowards who never permit
the dead to sleep nor, for that cold, dark matter,
the living – the street lights
blink on and off in useless surprise.

The church bells ring all four quarters
and a solitary, redundant one, as if to compete,
but the thunder steals the show:
which of these the voice of God?

I know she hates the lightning,
fears the ghastly flare that bleaches the fields
beyond the empty framing windows:
I should have been there
but cannot be.

So we are linked only by the jagged rips of light
and the wet lanes under the prowling thunder;
keeping low, the heart caught in the crossfire,
the faithless, like me, are prised from their beds
to sit, to watch, to admire, to regret.

The storm, a caravan of circus tricks, passes on;
the laid waste streets lie scrubbed and clean,
but not me, not me.

Intoxicated

2007-03-02T16:04:00.000Z

Having staggered to the gutter,
I can only see the stars:
no virgins, twins, crabs or bulls
but the sweet constellation of your face,
the smile on me – how you smile on me! –
that’s made me too drunk to walk
a straight line back into any other life.

The hotel

2007-03-02T15:54:00.000Z

In a hotel room, on the other side of an ocean,
I imagine myself retiring to bed, local time;
the starched white bathrobe falls to the floor
and I pull back the covers
to find you
’ve eaten the management’s goodnight chocolates –
yours and mine –
as a prelude to a night in executive class.

You unwrapped my twisted paper,
you pulled apart my foiled wrapping,
you sank your teeth through my hard coating
and you sucked out my soft centre.

What are you going to devour next?

Handy man

2007-03-02T15:48:00.000Z

He only came to double her glazing
but stayed to fix the holes in her life
where the weather crept in
and played havoc with her self-esteem.

With his spirit level,
he converted her loft to a pagan faith,
and rendered her speechless with his crazy paving;
steadily, he raised her pain threshold
and helped to cement relations
with her family and friends.

In the fullness of time, he found himself
taking root in her vegetable patch:
now she will live happily ever after
making soup with his bones.

Granny

2007-03-02T15:43:00.000Z

After he died, she worked in a charity shop
and cheerfully volunteered to have
a fling with the sub-postmistress.

Had she won the Lottery,
it would not have changed her life:
he had left her “comfortable”
she had no use for holidays
and she knew she could never have had him back
neither for love nor money.

My brother

2007-03-02T15:35:00.000Z

The brother I never had
would have died before me
to show me how it’s done,
like sharpening a penknife
or vaulting a gate;
but in his demonstration
of this dying art
there would have been
an undying truth:
I could never have done it
as well as him.

Her pants

2007-02-21T17:30:00.000Z

The skin of her teeth
brings out the philanthropist in me
but the seat of her pants
drives me to despair.

I don’t mind a close shave
but that’s too close for comfort.

The luck

2007-02-21T17:18:00.000Z

She never knew what hit her
and it was over
as soon as it began, almost:
a blinding, startling moment
that pushed her over the edge,
from madness to reason.

Some people get all the luck.

The wine

2007-02-21T16:32:00.000Z

He forgets to ask
before she leaves this morning
whether it was the Muscadet,
the pillow, or the heart
that did the talking last night:
last night, when she decided.

There is still wine in the glass
but who will drink it now?

The music

2007-02-20T15:46:00.000Z

She plays the cello
"like an angel"
to quote the Daily Telegraph;
but I can tell you something
they won't be publishing
in this week's pages:
when I see her on the stage,
playing that thing
held so softly between her thighs,
the music stirs thoughts in me:
thoughts that are distinctly News of the World.

Guilty

2007-02-19T16:57:00.001Z

It’s as if everyone in the village
had picked up their lives
from the shelves and networks
and taken to the hills, fled;
where they stood has turned red.

Soon, it will be dark
and under its cover
we will repatriate ourselves in their place
and laugh at the solemn moon
who witnessed it all
but drew the curtains
and said nothing.

Ladybird

2007-02-19T16:55:00.000Z

The ladybird on the table lamp
pauses and counts the cost
of the spots on her back.
There’s no such thing
as a gentlemanbird as
far as she’s concerned;
better to flex her wingcases
and fly away home,
whatever home might bring.