I’m feeling a bit ‘other worldly’
like you do coming out into the light
from the dark of the cinema
in the daytime obviously…
Or that first few steps after
taking off your roller skates…
Remember that?

When, in your head,
you’re still gliding, sliding
rather than stepping
and stumbling.
I’m starting to miss the
contact of others.
Those I wouldn’t maybe
normally see anyway.

How mad is that?

But it’s the knowing
that you CAN
even though you CAN’T
… Don’t want to
that’s what’s important.

I’m looking for closer hugs
rather than distant nods,
smiles, waves or shrugs
Looking for the WILL
rather than the WON’T.

Looking for the SHALL We?
rather than WE SHOULDN’T!
the COULD rather
than the COULDN’T.

We’ve all just got the
LONGING to meet
rather than just having the
THRONGING to beat.
We all have a yearning
for normality and
I’m worried about
losing my personality
I’m ready for the great outdoors
not lockdown laws.

I’m starting to want to go to
places I haven’t been for a while
even though I might not have
enjoyed them when I did.
I’m reminiscing
as well as just ‘missing’.

I think I might be a bit crazy
….Stir crazy!

Jack brought his ‘work’ home after that first day away…his Trojan!
a 22 foot van chassis on the kerb, in Cottingham, outside, that first night.
And Mrs Ellis, number 49, moaned about her front room’s loss of light.
Bud, fascinated, transfixed, sat up front, jiggled with levers, switches and gears.
"Steady on lad… calm down you’ll ****** up the settings,
here, turn that off, flick this switch, push that button. Wow… *******, the roar!
Be careful, ease your right foot off - he shouted - No! No, don’t push it to the floor!"

"Now then…foot on that one, yeh? That’s the clutch. Now push the stick top left.
Ease your left foot off… no, no gently, slowly, else you’ll **** it"…
“******* Jack, we’re moving’ what’s next, what’s next?”
Jack crouched behind the driver’s seat and shouted step by step…
“Ten to two! Hold the wheel tight. Go on, left foot on… stick back… Yep!”
“Foot off, more gas on the right. That’s it. That is it! Tight left lock.”
They were off… along the road - left, left and left again round the big block.

“Go round again, go on!” Jack shouted”. Turn right this time just here, slow down.
“Let the engine tek the load.”
and, instead of just skirting the houses
they were off down the Beverley Road.
No cab, wind in their hair and not a ****** care.
The trees, with wind filled cheeks, and enraptured shrieks
all the blurred green whizzed by…
Bud was driving. He was actually driving, at fourteen!
What a feeling?!

“Mam… Mam… I even double-de-clutched!…
“Did he Jack? Did he?  What is that anyway?”
“Aye Mam, he did… He were just gradely!”

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!