Do You Speak Middle English?

Arsgang means to void excrement.
Coillons are testicles.
Cakking stool is a term for the privy.
Swiven means to indulge in copulation
Gushelinge is a rumbling in the bowels
Wamblen means to eject vomitus
And yet, strangely enough, not one word for snowflake!

Hardy Pictures present: 'Heist'

Collecting The Wayfarer's Doll

Nestling in the water meadows
alongside the babbling River Itchen,
in the shadow of St. Catherine Hill's contours,
a few stone throws from Junction 11 of the M3,
amidst scenery that inspired Keats and Trollope,
there shall you find England's oldest almshouse.
Pilgrims once met at this ancient place.
En route to Canterbury.
There to quaff of their ale and tell of their tall tales.
Crusaders would have spent their final nights
beneath these self-same stars,
and prayed in the Norman church at dawn
afore setting sail for the holy battlefields in the East.
Today, the resident Brothers,
on their way to Matins or weekly Pay Parade,
watch on from under their trencher hats
as we seek to hide our 21st Century trappings
beneath layers of
hesian and leather and wool
and tights and cowels and capes
and factory-bought greasepaint 101.
At 5:30pm, as regular as clockwork,
Evensong is carried gently
on the breeze from the nearby cathedral.
Except for Wednesdays.

The City Of Kings

King Alfred's former capital holds for me
a handful of potent childhood memories.
Though, like the plaid cowboy shirts in my wardrobe,
they all seem to have come to me second-hand.
Cricket was born here.
Jane Austen died here.
The original Saxon one-way system
continues to infuriate both locals and visitors alike.

counting down the days

There's no room
No place to start
When our souls are apart

I wanna travel through time
See your surprise
See your smile
Hold you so tight
I'm counting down the days

How've you been
It's just the usual here
And days are feeling like years
And every day's without you

Now I cry
Just a little too much
When I think of your touch
And everything about you

I feel cold
I'm in the dark
When our souls are apart

I wanna travel through time
See our future
See our dreams
Hold you so tight
I'm counting down the days

HeartBurn

It's 3am and it feels like somebody
somewhere
must be sticking bobby-pins into a voodoo doll
made in my distinctive image.
Unless of course it's just
re-distributed Universal Life Force Energy
stirred-up by yesterday's reike session.
Difficult to know which of those is the more unlikely explanation.

1st Day Of Rehearsals

Sleep for no more than 2 hours
beneath a thin single layer of damp canvas.
Arise feeling effects of exhaustion, dehydration and onsetting flu.
Don't shower. Eat nothing.
Drive hire-care to ferry terminal and board vessel.
Sleep until mainland is reached.
Dream of Ventnor and Freshwater Bay and Blackgang Chine.
Allow co-passenger to complete journey to capital city.
Sleep until arrival in TW1.
Dream of Devendra and Creosote and Tunng.
Try and stay awake during
roundtable discussion about character archs.
Fail to stay awake during
roundtable discussion about character archs.
Keeps shades on at all times.
Important to make a good first impression.

Forgive Me My Moment Of Weakness

I've come to the
Raffles cafe in Paddington,
in a bid to banish any lingering taste
of orthodontic silly-putty from my gums.
Raffles is an old school kind of place.
All set breakfasts. And chips with everything.
A dying bread in our modern frappaccino Britain.
The tablecloths are plastic green gingham.
The sauces are red and brown.
The walls are festooned with framed
black-and-white photographs
of Han Solo, Dorothy and Toto,
Kirk Douglas, Peter Lorre, Stan and Ollie,
Awesome Welles, Bogie, Garbo and Dietrich.
It's not the first time
I've come here in search of sustenance.
I ate here once before;
on a lazy Bank Holiday afternoon,
back when I was happy
and in love
and there wasn't dust and wood shavings
and polythene all over the floor
of the house I had yet to buy.
The impressions taken of my teeth
are hardening at room temperature as I order
baked beans and scrambled eggs on two toasts.
By the time I've finished my brew.
they'll have been collected by a courier
and begun their all-expenses-paid trip to Germany.