Moving house.

Downsizing.

Fitting quarts into pint pots

With lots and lots and lots

Of junk collected through the years.

The worst of all fears

Drowning in a sea of junk!

Everything from Art Deco to Punk

Bits and pieces

From sons and nieces

And daughters……oh….daughters..

and in the midst of all this chaos

One lone cry.

Why……oh why…..oh why…..

Did I tell her I found it in the loft!

I must be going soft.

It’s been there for ages

Even the wisest of sages

Didn’t know it still existed.

But still the cry……

Oh….don’t throw that away…..

Total dismay.

Send it to the tip or put it in the charity skip

We haven’t got the room.

Besides

If we keep it the kids will only have to sort it when we’re gone

And do you really want to do that to them?

And with the grandchildren……mayhem!

The best gift we can leave

Is a clean and tidy house

No junk….no ‘stuff’…

Just happy memories.

I am fed up of trying to be what I am not.
I am what I am.
Actually, I am a product of my upbringing
Of where I went to school.
Of who my friends were
Of what my fears were
Of what my hopes were

And….

Of what my wife made me
Of what my family made me
Of what my job made me

But……
Underneath….
I am what I am!

So…..
What to do?

I am what I am.
I can only be what I am
I can only think what I think
I can only say what I say
I can only do what I do.

After a life time of being what others want me to be
I want to be myself
I want to be comfortable in my own skin
I want to be accepted by my kin…
Not for what they want me to be
But for what I am.

Love me or hate me….
I am what I am.
I like that.
Live with it!

The problem with growing old is what you become in the eyes of others.
And for men it’s harder.
Women are always what they have been….sisters, aunties, wives, and mothers.
Keepers of the larder.
But when a man retires, he is no more,
No more what he was
He’s just a bore
Who talks on things because
There isn’t anything else to do with all that accumulated knowledge.
At this point, ‘old’, you stop, or, you carry on.
And if you ‘carry on’,
There’s no concession, no quarter
No respite, just shorter
Tempers.
You’re old and in the way.
You have nothing of value to say
It’s a young man’s game.
But if you quit…..retire…desist…
It’s worse…you cease to exist.
You are not what you were…..all that stops….in a blink of the eye.
So….
You are old and in the way
You have nothing of value to say.

This has to stop. Let battle commence.

I wish I was a child again,

Then I could fly like Superman

Or I could kill a thousand Huns,

Or capture tigers without guns.

I wish I was a child again,

Climbing walls and pinching apples,

And ringing bells and running off,

And hurling bricks in the old stone trough.

I wish I was a child again,

Enjoying milk and eating cake,

And spending sixpence in the shop,

And draining bottles of their last drop.

I wish I was a child again,

With tousled hair and bike-scraped knees,

And trousers never meant to fit

A boy who never learnt to sit.

I wish I was a child again,

Then I could play most every day,

With my gradchild, who, without fail,

Draws back with ease the memory’s veil.

I wish I was a child again.

It’s not that I can’t,

It’s not that I don’t

It’s not that I haven’t,

It’s just that I won’t.

It’s just that feeling that says ‘not just now’,

I couldn’t explain it, I wouldn’t know how.

Mind you, I could be persuaded, and if left, un-aided

I might come around, if I don’t feel too jaded.

But nevertheless, the time is not right,

And I’m not doing this just out of spite.

It’s just that…..

Oh, all right!

Give me a reason for seeing,

When all around is blind.

Give me a reason for listening

When deafness is all I can find.

Give me a reason for thinking….

A reason for using my mind.

Give me a reason for living….

For being a part of mankind.

In my sight there is death,

In my listening, its sounds,

In my thinking its reasons

In my living its bounds.

But, when my spirit weakens,

I look into the eyes of my children,

and my childrens’ children,

For there I see myself.

For there I see hope.

For there I see love.

For there I see an innocent defiance

That has the strength to overcome anything.

For there I see a spirit that does not know how to give in.

For there is my reason for living.

Th’Olympics…

“There’s more chance of landing on Mars…”
He said….
“There’s more chance of that than getting Gold.
Never in a month of Sundays…..”
He said…..
“Three bloody weeks of this”
He said….
“We couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery”
He said….
“We’ll be the laughing stock of the world”
He said….
“We just haven’t got it in us”
He said…..
“We’re not good at winning, we just invent the game, then lose”
He said…..
“No killer instinct”
He said….
“And the women, well, they are worse…..Beach Volley Ball, Beach Volley Ball!!”
He said….
“That’s not an Olympic sport”
He said….
Well,
Do you know…..
We have landed on Mars,
It feels like we’ve had a Month of Sundays,
We’ve got Gold coming out of every orifice
The women have been superb
Beach Volley Ball has been highly entertaining…
And skilful.
And that old bugger has been glued to the TV night and day!
Cheering and shouting
Demanding his tea on the sofa
Putting the TV on in the kitchen
(We never have the TV on in the kitchen…..never….don’t know why he bought it.)
Discussing the nuances of every sport…
Well, the ones we win at….
It just seems like every sport!
And now……and now….
“Pity it’s over”
He said….
“Bloody Olympics!”
She said!

There’s a man at the end of our road,

He wanders up and down,

He walks the town by day and night

And carries bags that look quite light,

I don’t know why.

Of course, he’s different,

And that makes people shy.

They call him ‘the bagman’,

Or ‘tramp’.

Those who think they think

Call him ‘idle’, or ‘good for nothing’.

A vagabond. A sponger. A wastrel.

But those who think they think,

Don’t know!

They don’t know

That he alone can see the Goblins.

It is he alone that chase them away.

It is he alone that fill in the cracks

On the pavement with his aura,

To keep the children safe.

It is he alone

Who keeps the demons in his head

Away from you and I.

I find all drunks threatening

They upset my equilibrium

They are unpredictable

Irrational

And ..

I seem to be a flypaper for drunks.

‘It’s awesome’

That’s what they would say.

But they use words lightly.

They don’t see mountains, trees and skies

The wonder in a child’s eyes.

The majesty of a giraffe and the grace of a deer

The pure pleasure in an ice cold glass of beer.

‘Awesome’ is something transient to them

Not a lasting thing, not a lasting memory

It is something they haven’t done and didn’t think of

It lives and dies in a moment

It does not exist through the ages

It earns wages

It is the cleverness of someone else

It is truly awesome in it’s triviality!