Tonight we present…

Tonight we have a new band member; here from India, fresh from her trip to the top of the mountains. Fresh from her affair, of sorts, with the pale complexion and fast hands of the entirely feminine fiddle player.

The boss; he's been ravished and bewitched by her beautiful, brazen, bare faced emblazoned eyes, and her mantra, in four-eight time, interlaced with the bouncing bow of the fiddlers finger strings

The drone of it all is enchanting; Mark said that they played music from Get Carter. He thought it was shot in Doncaster, I thought on South Shields sands or thereabouts.

Yes, you said, that was the main body of it, only two or three scenes in South Yorkshire. Later we walk home, through the familiar passages; in the darkness. That time of year when the moon seems to take longer to turn.

I have been drinking Pale Rider, a beer with a lightness of sight and taste, and with its 5.2% strength it is a particular favourite.

Now the stereo plays I can't give you anything but love, a song from long, long ago by the Mills Brothers. I wonder if, with their bewitching smiles they told anyone of their well-sold intricate, intimate, anything but hidden affair

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Goyt

Up on our own blueberry hill, in the throes

Of Buxton water

You held my hand, laid me down

I told you, of my daughter

There so clear we thought her to have done so well

To have fairly reached; no fear

That time so near, I hear your laughter

The song to be blessed, by one so dear

The early summer streams, cold water falls over

The white, uncovered toes

Beneath a stone-arch bridge, in turned up trousers

Where hardly anyone now goes

With the sunlight flickering through the silver reeds

And the moorland’s distinctive past

Where on that afternoon, before the evening moon

Our love, our love took fast

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Not fooled by design

Clothed by Calvin Klein or Lacoste

Or Ralph Lauren or Henri Lloyd

You are out of place in this town where

To dress cheaply is itself part of the attraction

Where sharply to turn a hand too quickly

In a game of cards, is altogether unexpected

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Your land is not my land, but welcome

We walk in familiar places

Our conversation races and chases

Then fades into our undiscovered dreams

My shoe laces, faced on the strike of the

Faraway clock are undone; the shine

Of flameless traces in the half light

Of midnight are over the cross unsung

We talk in particular cases of the real and

The imaginary, dazed by the liquor of love

My news of a Windrush calling, falling in line

The shadows steps, still and moving are abroad

In my country, here upon my Lincolnshire Wolds

The few truths that only they are able

To carry are held together; string on paper

Hope in the music of Liszt or Offenbach

We turn the last corner, under the

Soft sway of the evergreen willow

We walk along the unlit shingle path

Through the hinged wooden gate

And together we turn the cast metal

Key around, in our mortice security lock

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All around the world

I'm told you've played at Glastonbury

Was that before the entanglement

Of your Dorset pale faced folk fiddler

And your sub-continent Bhangra baby

The newly beautiful, truly deep eyed singer

The geography teacher

She tells me that she is tone deaf

And all night I see her fingers dance

On the curved back of her estranged lover

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