My Poems

He blew his whistle, Tory Zac
The dogs came running in a pack
Instead of slavering at his whim
They growled and barked and savaged him

The sixteenth of May
That was the day
When my name changed (cue: roll of the drum)
My name which had been
Previously Janine
Now became Somebody's Mum

Somebody's Mum!
Put this gel on his gum
It'll help ease his pain when he's teething
Somebody's Mum!​
Aw, he's sucking his thumb
And he twitches his nose when he's breathing

Zac was smart and Zac was cool
Zac had learned at boarding school
That boys like Zac were born to rule

His minions said, "Oh Zac, in May
Be lord of all that you survey"
Just one small thing stood in his way

Before Zac took his rightful place
He had one minor trial to face
He had to win a running race

A stretched-out band's pulled thin and pale with tension
This wretched land is fertile for portension
Its far-fetched plan is born of apprehension
Turns breath-snatched panic past my comprehension
My rough-sketched sanded smile is just pretension
And level-handed mantras get no mention
Anxiety
Is anguish plus society

Today is Queen Elizabeth's 90th birthday, and the media is awash with fawning coverage. Yesterday, queen of entertainment Victoria Wood died. This is a respectful reworking of Victoria Wood's classic Ballad of Freda and Barry (Let's Do It).

Freda and Barry sat one day
Debating the issues that came their way
Freda thinks equality's the way ahead
But Barry likes Harry and so he said ...

With a nod to The Jam's 'Man in the Corner Shop' ...

Turns the closed sign does the man in the border post
Rejects his last and says goodbye to her
He knows it is a hard life
But he has to follow orders really

Walks back to camp does the last applicant
She's not angry with the man in the border post
She is sick of struggling so hard
She says it must be nice to have a home to go to

Welcome to our month of Autism Bewareness
No demands for equal rights or fairness
Reshaping round holes into squareness
You'll miss the point if you are careless

For it's our charity's consensus
That those afflicted are defenceless
We want a cure not independence
Please help us meet our great expenses

When places of worship
​          become places of wonder
Bright-eyed guides
          will tell wide-eyed visitors
You won't believe
          what people used to believe
And then, with downcast eyes
          they will add
And you'll never believe
          what some of them did
          in the name of what they believed

One from my 1980s days as The Big J. Windscale nuclear power station had been renamed Sellafield in 1981, as the government sought to rebrand it after a series of safety concerns ...

Forget the Costa Brava, don’t go to Benidorm
They’re full of germs and foreigners, and our camp is just as warm
The air is really bracing, and hidden costs concealed
It really is all good clean fun on holiday in Sellafield.

Without us nothing's moved nor made
No building and no bricks
Without us no foundations laid
And nothing broken fixed
Without our labour they've no purpose
No profits, only losses
The bosses always need the workers
But workers don't need bosses