THE PIE FACTORY EXPLODED

 

The pie factory exploded

And it was carnage inside

There were also casualties

As 3.14 people died

THE NINE MUSES OF THE ARTS – MELPOMÈNE (MUSE OF TRAGEDY)

 

The nine muses

Daughters of Zeus

Inspiring of mortals

And nurturers of the arts

The fifth was,

The divine Melpomène,

The one that is melodious,

Was firstly the muse of singing

To celebrate with dance and song

Then she became the muse of tragedy

And hid behind a tragic mask

A knife or club in her hand

Creator of beautiful lyrical phrases

Melpomène muse of Horace

Waiting For God In Frinton

I’m in my fifties now and I started drinking when I was 15, which was in the early 1970’s.
I always looked older than my age, though not old enough to pass for 18 when I was three years younger but it was the 70s and landlords pretty much turned a blind eye to 15 and 16 year olds drinking as long as they didn’t look to out of place.
My first ever pint was in a pub called the Man in the Moon and it cost me 17 pence.
And the first sip of that foaming brew set me on the road to oblivion.

I didn’t drink everyday but when I drank I didn’t hold back and I didn’t know when to stop.
On one occasion, a Friday, I left work at 5.30pm and went straight to the pub, with that weeks pay packet in hand, in those days we got paid weekly in cash, I woke up the next morning in a bus shelter with 3 pence in my pocket, I had pissed away a weeks wages in one night.
On A works beano one year we went on a day trip to France the more serious drinkers among our party drank nonstop for 26 hours and very nearly drank ourselves sober, one or two of the group had to be carried but the hardened drinkers walked back to the ferry.

On another occasion after a friend’s house party I woke up on the bedroom floor, having no idea how I got there.
It was only later when I spoke to my friends that I found out the whole story of what I had done and that they had carried/dragged me home.
They were good friends, who through my behaviour, I gradually alienated one by one until there was no one left to get me home.
So I woke up in gardens, subways and gutters, I even woke up once in a skip with a kebab stuck to my face.
In the end I was disowned by my family and my only friends were fellow drunks.

Despite my drunken binges I still managed to hold down a decent job so when
I was in my late twenties I moved to Woking to take up a very well paid job which served to fund my benders very well indeed.
On one particular weekend in September I had been drinking since breakfast and kept it up all day, but by midnight all the pubs were shut.
But a serious drunk always knows where to find a drink so I took a cab to Casper’s, a members only an all-night drinker.
It was there that I met Angela who would become my salvation.
She was a good looking woman, around about my age, who was also a drunk.
Although the drink hadn’t yet diminished her looks.

The next morning I woke up in the passenger seat of a car on the sea front in Frinton with Angela sleeping slumped over the steering wheel.
I had absolutely no recollection of how we got there, or how we got there.
I got out of the car to stretch my legs and the bracing sea breeze almost knocked me off my feet.
I walked along the sea front, trying desperately to clear my head but things were no clearer 20 minutes later when I returned to the car.
Which by some miracle was parallel parked to perfection, and I marveled at how we had got from Woking to Frinton and lived to tell the tale.

Then a sense of doom came over me as I looked at the bright blue Chrysler in front of me because although we had got to Frinton unscathed the car had not.
The front of the car carried all the hallmarks of a serious front end collision.

I roused Angela from her drunken slumber and got her out of the car and walked her up and down until the sea breeze had blown the cobwebs away.
“How the hell did we get here?” I asked
“Get where?” she mumbled
“Frinton” I replied
“Where the hell is Frinton?” Angela asked
I walked her further along the seafront until we reached a café that was actually open at 6.00am on a Sunday and several coffees later I got some sense out of her
“The last thing I remember we were in Casper’s and you said “I haven’t been to the coast for ages”” She said slowly “so we finished our drinks and got in my car”
“And?” I pressed
“And then you woke me up” she said, head in hands
“Do you remember hitting anything?” I whispered
“No, like what?” Angela queried
“I don’t know” I replied “but whatever it was, you hit it hard”

It was after nine when we stood up to leave.
A small group of fishermen were coming in as we were going out.
“All I know is old Joe was walking the dog when he got hit” one of them said
“And he’s dead?” asked another
“Yes, and the driver didn’t stop” the first one replied
What little colour had returned to Angela’s face while we were in the café instantly drained away as the realization of what she had done dawned on her as well.

We returned to the car but Angela was too distraught to drive, I was suddenly stone cold sober so I got behind the wheel and chose a route that took us back to Woking via a circuitous route.

After That September Sunday all those years ago when some poor resident soul in Gods waiting room lost there life at our hands I lost my taste for booze.
I still see Angela from time to time she still lives in Woking but she never came to terms with what we had done that day and surrendered completely to the demon in the bottle.
I see her around about town with the other winos and I believe she sleeps under the canal bridge.

I wonder if she sleeps any sounder than I.

THE BUSBY BABESS A TALE OF HEROES

A TALE OF HEROES

Young heroes returning
From a far off foreign field
With hard fought victory won
Where the valiant refused to yield

Like heroes from Homers Iliad
Exalted in the legends
But in the Germanic snows
The heroes journey ends

As the Gods of winter struck
Fire and ice took its toll
And the names were duly writ
Upon an eternal honour roll

Geoff Bent, Roger Byrne (Capt)
Duncan Edwards, Billy Whelan
David Pegg, Tommy Taylor
Mark Jones and Eddie Colman

THE SURVING BABES OF MUNICH

Morgans and Blanchflower
Never played again
Some played to soon
Some could never play the same

Some were cast aside
Some fullfilled there destiny
But none were unscathed
After the tradgedy

Those who remained
Of the team Busby built
All survived the horror
But lived with the guilt

THE BUSBY BABES REPLAYED

The Busby Babes were sublime
The best by far in their time
And when eight of their number
Went to their eternal slumber
They went straight to heaven
To join St Peters first XI

THE BUSBY BABES

The young lads played the game
The Busby Babes was their name
Though they played like magic
They embraced tragedy in Munich
Their plane crashing in the snow
The wreckage burning all aglow
Eigth of their magnificent number
Would not see another summer

JIMMY MURPHY 6TH FEBRUARY 1958

In those brief moments,
Jimmy was happy,
On top of the world.
He had reached the pinnacle
Wales in the World Cup Finals
United in the European semis
Life was good
Life was very good indeed

Then the news came
Of a crash in the snow
And suddenly
Life wasn’t so good.
Information,
Patchy at first
Trickled in,
Not all reliable
Miss information
Spread like the plague,
Then the facts emerged
From amongst the fictions
So many dead
So many lost
And for the living
Life would never be the same

Jimmy blamed himself
For being so smug
For being so happy
For being alive

MANCHESTER UNITED DARKEST HOUR

Broken in he twisted wreckage
The victims of Munics winter carnage
Crashing in the snow and ice
There would have to be a fearful price
And when the bill was finally reckoned
Deaths reaper grimly beckoned
Towards the twenty three poor souls
That appeared on his fearsome rolls
Young men cut down in their prime
Older ones who thought they’d more time
Were all taken from that grissly place
To feel the breath of heaven on their face
Taking the souls who died in the snow
To where the innocents and the heroes go

RMS TITANIC

The finest ship of the White Star Line,
Titanic majestically sailed the brine
A floating palace of opulence
A thing of beauty and elegance

But beauty is but a fragile veneer
And conceals a truth more austere
Into the depths Europe’s poor, are thrust
Travelling in steerage like human ballast

The iceberg cut her stem to stern
But at first no one showed concern
Except the poor below the waterline
Where it quickly filled with Icy brine

“Only God himself could sink her”
It was claimed by an unknown author
The Titanic promoted by J. Bruce Ismay
Quickly sank to his utter dismay

LATE

John Ellis worked hard
And spent his leisure time
Pubbing and Clubbing
Till late
Very late
This night didn’t differ
When he crawled into his pit
Much the worse for drink
It was late
Very late
When he awoke in the morning
Thick head pounding
He stared bleary eyed at the clock
It was late
Very late
Slowly what he saw permeated the haze
Dawning on him in the half light
And he cursed
I’m late
I’m late
He hurriedly scraped the ice
Then when he got in the car
The radio confirmed
He was late
Very late
He was a safe driver normally
But today he drove too fast
He took too many chances
Because he was late
Very late
He raced on to the motorway
Despite the spray and patchy mist
He raced on ever conscious
He was late
Very late
Bright red lights
Pierced through the mist suddenly
He braced himself and braked
Too late
Too late
His mangled body sat motionless
In the tangle of mangled metal
And his life ebbed away
Late, late
The late John Ellis