Never could grow a decent beard…
If I tried It’d be a bit sparse,
trying to cultivate on my face
what grows wild around my ****.
I’ve tried all sorts...hormones, unctions,
ointment, chicken manure…
(I'd heard that was good) but nothing,
it seems, quite cracks it when adding to my allure!

There’s an early morning toker on the beach.
Can’t go home. His dysfunctional family’s out of reach.
The puzzle’s finished, he’s just a left over piece that doesn’t fit.

He’s a jigsaw piece without a place to go.  A conundrum
for social services, nice charity workers, who fail to know
how a seeming misfit’s mind works and what makes him tick.

He can’t engage with team leaders, “stupid bleeders”. They make him sick.
He’s due back at six… got to be clean - no blow, no skunk, no beer.
He’ll blow numbers and he knows it and it’s clear

They won’t let him sleep in his own bed tomorrow night…
He’s persona non-grata ‘cos every time he’s out he skins up… It’s *****!
He hates the rehab in the hostel, but can’t cope on the outside.

Catch 22 at 20 it’s a cul de sac…Everything he does is wrong… It’s all utter cack
He says he’ll top himself… people can’t see the real him, says he’s not off the track.
He just needs love, warmth, support, reassurance, guidance, a family, a job… He don’t wanna go back.

Another day… cold and driving rain. There’s an early morning toker on the beach…again!
Actually he’s been there all night - his family’s out of reach. He’s still, not moving. His pupils have no shine.
“Alright mate… are you OK?” Oh **** - He’s sheet white, still not moving… Dial 999.

There’s a bedsheet on a bush, at a roundabout on the A259

’graffiti’d’ with “Happy Birthday Colin • 65 Today!”…

And, whilst, yeah… Many Happy Returns Colin, that might be fine,

after a month of passing by every day, you have to say,

why don’t they just take the effing thing away?

Elsan! I know… it sounds like a sun-kissed Spanish Beach doesn’t it?. El San!
What it is, is a make of chemical toilet. In the old days, we called it The Can!
In the yard behind a Yorkshire farmhouse… your fate & your poo - was sealed!
Grandma Ellen’s WC was the best advert for crapping alfresco out in the nearest field.

But, in a corrugated shed… a plank seat on a galvanised bin with a cranking handle.
Always best visited in daytime ‘cos after dark you’d need to take a candle.
And, when you’d achieved your goal in there… and it was past your time,
you cranked it and your extrusion disappeared in the primordial slime.

It was not a reader’s loo… No time for catching up wit’ Daily Mail.
although the paper was held neatly to the shed’s timber frame with a trusty, rusty 6inch nail.
It was cut into handy squares.  And almost without fail, you’d start to read still sitting there
and, when you got into the words, readable in the gloom, they were cut off just above the tear!

No, you’d just want to get out quick… The Jeyes Fluid scent would tend to make you gag,
It didn’t even allow my cousin Alan time for a crafty ***.  And monthly, according to occupancy,
Uncle Charlie did the job he’d said he’d never fancy, that of struggling toward the field
to empty the contents. Ironic really that after Uncle Charlie and Auntie Nellie died
the next owners plumbed their new one - up to the new fangled mains inside!

A fishing rod for Brian… wow, of course! A definite must!
He’d been banging on… can I, can I, can I mam…aw… just
like a broken record. So he got one - just because he fussed!
So the mantra switched… "When, when, Mam, when can we go?"
My mam and dad, always busy in the shop, so they didn’t know.

And me dad, he'd never been fishing in his life though.
His own dad had died when he was twelve - so no,
he’d not been shown the ropes: but how hard could it be?…So
":OK, we’ll go down to the pier or the harbour in Brid.
Anything to shut him up." And me? Well I wanted to go and so - we all did!

We’re off in our Austin 10… “Are we nearly there yet dad -
are we nearly there?
Bait, bait, we need some bait where will we get that? Where?”
“Shut up, sit down, button your coat up and I will get you there.
There’ll be a shop a bait shop - AND I, I will bait the hook!”
You, pain in the ****, don’t touch anything - all you CAN do is look!"

We parked, got to the pier, unpacked our stuff - just as it began to rain.
My brother was still whingeing, my dad was seething… Brian WAS being a pain.
The wind blew, horizontal rain. The worm fell off the hook. Dad, annoyed, put it on again.
“Can I do it Dad?” “NO!” This was the moment, the one that we all hoped would be…
the next best thing to catching a fish… The cast!
When my old man threw the whole effin' lot in the sea!

It started out as a spelling mistake but turned into a poem about petty crime…

A smattering of temptation as you wander through the shop.
You’re certain no one’s seen you, or caught you on the hop!
The carousel of cameras scanning overhead.
If there is a wazz up there watching someone outside would have said.
You’ve popped the bag of sweets (a test) into your hood
so time for the big one…the single malt, the triple filtered ***** or the brandy
That looks good…Handy!… I’d give ‘em an asbo!

Make the punishment fit the crime…no custody, no doing time
for anything so puny. So, lifting from a shop’s not attracting attention
and mugging the pension from a careless granny wouldn’t even get a mention.
If you’re lucky… it’d just get ‘em an asbo!

Inner Cities spawn organised gangs with distractors, dippers, lookouts,
And millions spent on security, surveillance, radio networks…to confound the canny louts
It all gets added to the cost of goods, hits the pocket of the shopper
and when the deal goes down it’s just the ineffectual copper
who passes the gangs on to the courts… just to get an asbo

The system isn’t coping the prisons are full of proper crims & the rest think it’s a game.
We need a dis-incentive, a deterrent something to put them off their aim.
with technology in our lives today like that electric control collar for dogs
Well, this’d be a way to confound those who set out to do us ill…
an extension to the tag but with extra skill… a kind of super asbo

Since I’m slightly to the right of Atilla the ***…

So… there should be a new E-procedure to deal with crime that’s just called petty
like an app that sends a message to the ankle tag when someone sets out to be a lag
and, when their bad deed is done, and they’re divvying up the loot
the tag tightens cuts the blood supply and amputates their bleedin’ foot!
Asbolutely!

It’s probably because these days,
now that my knees hurt more,
that when I’ve tackled our K2  stairs -
and I’m on the top floor,
you might just hear me ask
“what the **** did I come up here for?”
You see it’s not just the legs
but the brain that’s weak.
All the plusses that old age holds in store…
out of breath, can’t speak, need a leak…
but sod it, what did I actually come up here for?
It’ll come to me in a minute if I give it some thought
just for a minute or so...
I know, have at least two of everything,
one up one down, so that wherever you go
there’ll be what you want right there…
Or... just move to a bungalow!

Meanwhile... what did I come up here for?