Van Mildert’s Portrait

At first I thought of it as a week of my life

Without a single memory 

I sat in the cathedral and pondered

All those years ago did I not go on to the rooftop

Was it not possible back then to look down on the prison

Are these simply a nowadays imagination

I am more certain

Of a formidable figure

Whose portrait hung high

In the university halls

He was overlooking

Indeed overpowering the diners

As they sat in the refectory

And stumbled through lunch

We remained strangers one and all

They left my life, without a single memory


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Highlands and Islands: Christopher & Kate on Tour

Summer vacation gives this part-time poet the time, the space and the inspirations to enjoy his creative outlet. These poems are presented in chronological order, in their entirety, as a record. These are the days and nights that passed as Kate & I travelled first north, then west and finally south, back to our home in Lincolnshire.

These movements, changes in direction, are on the macro scale, we also spent much time traversing microcosmically.

There could be more photographs, thousands were taken. The poems are considered a differentiated form of aide-mémoire.

No More Pebbledash - Join the Campaign Today

For two many years I have been a man without a cause. I have meandered, with an almost entire lack of conviction, through every aspect of my life. 

But, and I know you sensed a but coming, I think I have now found my calling. 

I want to rid the world of pebbledash. Pebbledash is the scourge and a blight to the outside of houses in just the same way as Anaglypta wallpaper was to the inside of houses. They both serve to cover up shoddy workmanship, to bring a continuity of surface onto uneven foundations. 

Instead of making the bare surface bold and beautiful it is as if they would encourage pretty girls to wear rickety-rackety undergarments, assuring these poor innocents that a spray of top coat will turn them into princesses, it won't; their veneer will be seen through, their pretentiousness to any honour will be discounted.

I have seen no beauty in pebbledash, I believe its very make up, and form of application, prohibit such beauty ever emerging. 

I think then that I have found my cause. I want to rid the world of pebbledash!

First I want to clear this ugliness from the countryside, where this so obviously man-made debacle sits absolutely uneasily alongside the beauty of nature.

I would also like to begin on the Hebridean Isles, where this, my revulsion to pebbledash, climaxed. And perhaps as a symbolic gesture I would begin with the Museum of South Uist outside of where I now sit.

Kate is keen to join the protest but isn't too happy with my stance of not entering pebbledashed buildings. I will have to put her on the associate membership list I think, until she becomes more committed.

We call in on the Dutch artist Jac Volbeda, he welcomes Kate and me into his fine and artistic white, wet-dashed, bed abd breakfast property, he gives us many links to artists and writers from the Netherlands, I tell him of my campaign against pebbledash, he has some sympathy, together we listen to Counting Crows.

Polochar Inn Beach

There is a song at the waters edge
There are pebbles on vacant sands
There are swirls where the streams of water head towards the sea
There are people, why wouldn't there be

The beauty of this beach idyll is then all but beaten out of me by Kate's insistence that we carry on walking in the rain, towards a small dwelling, with four windows and a door

I go along with the daftness for a while but finally insist on returning to the hotel
Kate walks to my left side, taking shelter from the persistent rain; my right side becomes soddened

At the cross roads we turn right, now we walk directly into the wind, and the slanting rain
Kate takes shelter, she walks, just short of a rainfalls depth, behind me; my front becomes entirely soddened

A calm emerges, clear light ahead
There are songs in my head
There are stones for my feet to kick
There are puddles, ideal for children to skip and splash in
There are people, why wouldn't there be

Darutti Harris Tweed

Neither the lady from New York nor her colleague from the South of England were in the Harris Tweed shop today. Indeed their part of the homely store was closed for restoration work. Consequently the three jackets they had helped me choose yesterday afternoon remained on the shelves, for I had vowed only to make a purchase after hearing how these two characters had got themselves to the remote village of Grosebay on the Isle of Harris. Without their factual explanation I might have to drive forward fanciful interpretations of my own; Kate says they weren't sisters, which was my first presumption. We heard that Prince Charles and Camilla had visited the shop, perhaps the two assistants had a royal connection (Kate is busily looking up the equivalent of an hotel maitre d' for a clothes shop to improve the use of the word assistant) The shop is in truth a private house, as far away from the High Street as any shop anywhere in the world. The clothes are all of Harris Tweed, the jackets I care for are by Darutti. The ladies tell me they are of Italian design, by German manufacture, using the most exclusive fabric in the world (they were not in the business of underselling their wares). They told me in one I looked slimmer, in another I was the perfect country gent ready for a day at the races, and in the third the colours in the tweed picked out perfectly the blonde colouring in my hair (at school it was called ginger), as I say they were not in the underselling business.