It is a fact that Donald Campbell, or maybe it was his father Malcolm,   completed a standard mile on the lane between Arlingham and The Old Passage Inn   in a fascist-branded Bluebird one day in June 1935, reaching on the first pass a speed of 321 mph and then a speed of 319 […]

She cocks her head to one side now to listen when we speak, as she is partially deaf since her skis hit a pine tree scattering steel stars… and all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men…     Eggs all look the same but each one is as unique   as a soldier […]

On a mission. A tiny clod amid still, muddy waters. Alone, no dueller in front, I draw. Through the cylinder’s bores – the pupil and the gunpowder, as the cock rests, waiting for the forefinger. There’s no getting round it, the hour is striking. A prayer, or a shot in the dark. Something is sparkling […]

That weekend there was an accident. But this is not about where you were, the merry-go-rope and sky crack of walnut boulders, the sheep wool sliding in the rain –   but who washed the blood and grit from your arms, who listened to the oh-oh story first, and heard   the cows on the […]

I am growing a garden on his skin. I plant an iris in the iris of his eye; On his left temple, I’m cultivating A red rose; on his right, a patch of pinks. Into a trench I’ve dug in his cheekbone, I sow Pink Fir Apple seed potatoes.   On me, he composes a […]

Days of will we, won’t we. Showers of daisy-petals. To have judged his character so incorrectly: to be here with a bunch of weeds – brambles, nettles. How could she have known he’d spoil her byway its intimate hedgerows spreading to enfold him? His footwear soon dragged and his tongue took a sting. Mud-pats and […]

She’s rarer than Lady’s Slipper or Bee Orchids. She thinks of the minutes, hours, days, weeks – fingers, spoons, knitting needles, coat-hangers before the non-retractable solid steel blades at least two centimetres wide and thirty-eight long.   He thinks of her lips, the pink flesh of her tongue, soft palate, resistant pharynx; imagines meandering veins, […]

You come at me from all angles, ricocheting, high on adrenalin – you’ve got me climbing the wall…   Just look at it from my perspective: the oblique approach, saut de chat, passement, roulade, demitour…   franchissement, frankly, doesn’t shatter my defences, dress it how you will in fancy French…   Parkour? Mais merde alors… […]