My motor car crept along, under the majestic shape of Co. Sligo’s prominent mountain, Ben Bulben, covered in an ominous black cloud, as I and the wife explored Yeats’ Country.

We filled up at Betty Hanharan’s, with a huge pot of tea to follow,
and met an old chap called Brian, whose delight it was to visit such a splendid county.

‘I’ll buy you a glass of stout,’ he told us,
‘down the road ...

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I sat in a quaint pub, guzzling its real ales,
and wondering how I could reconnect with Gabriela, my lost love, who was somewhere in Hicklegate, that famous spa town of North Yorkshire.

Then, staggering past the war memorial,
I was halted in my tracks by a preacher, and stood transfixed as he told me that ‘Jesus saves’.

‘Really?’ I said to myself, thinking that this town attracts some righ...

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I’m a talented fellow, full of grandiose claims, 
for instance, that I’ve climbed every mountain in the Lake District. 

So what, I included one which is only a hill,
and alright, I exaggerated when boasting about rescuing that adventurer Ranulph Fiennes.
You know the one, who walked across Antarctica braving snow and ice.

I didn't rescue him from an avalanche, or from plummeting over a pr...

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Flower power erupted in the gardens of Hicklegate,
when an old African lady visited the town’s beautiful parks,
and put a magical ingredient on the roots of its budding plants.

She’d obtained it from a mixture of Lesothian beetle droppings,
topping it off with a coating from some Congolese ants.

But former Royal Naval midshipman, Percy Picklethwaite,
smelt a familiar odour, that reminded...

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I ran 5000 metres on a running track in 14 minutes and 34 seconds,
a personal best by a country mile, but I didn't really enjoy
the cut and thrust of track and field, preferring the road and those fell races
where I could race down a gradual descent, leaping like a stag over rock and stile.

I liked to pretend I could mix it with the ‘tough men of the fells’, and pick up easy prizes.

Which...

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Her name’s Triumph, and she daily triumphs against adversity.

An African lady, she left her homeland, a dominion of this Disunited Kingdom,
to come and teach mathematics in the ‘Mother Country’.
Now, according to the warden of a Yorkshire park home, this old woman’s a ‘nutter’.

She waved her arms and said ‘Thank you very much’,
after crossing the road after getting off the bus.

That wa...

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I wash my hair in washing-up liquid, it saves the pennies while making it curl.
I thought it would make me look the part, as a roadie with a band called Everything But The Girl.

I’d joined after I was kicked out from my teaching post at Mulchester Marton public school,
after broadcasting radical views over the school radio.

I was vilified by the PC brigade and called an ‘old fart’, after m...

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I strolled along the Dingle, taking a break from teaching my psychology students,
who’d scoffed when I’d claimed, ‘Though I am of a logical bent,
I believe that there’s more to this world than you think.’

When who should I meet but a marvellous mermaid, sunning herself in the morning mist,
which is quite an achievement in itself.

Among the riverside detritus, she shone like a beacon in th...

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My name is ‘Buncie’ Billington-Brig, a genuine self-important old fool,
who loves to pontificate on society’s ills while propping
up the bar in my local, The Dancing Duck.

I was happy in my pomposity, as befitting a secretary of the Masonic Hall,
until the night subtle hints were made that my wife – chairwoman of our village branch
of The Keep Britain Pure society, was anything but.

Inde...

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As a rugby league fan, there are many tales I relish of the great game,
but none are as remarkable as that of the little lad who ignored the critics to fulfil his lifelong dream.

In a northern city not too long ago, Malachi Middlemound,
all five-foot two of him, harboured a secret ambition – to play rugby for his hometown.
But notorious braggart, ‘Bruiser’ Bill Billycan, would laugh, saying ...

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My story begins the night Heathcliff, that handsome literary invention of
one half of the Bronte sisters, popped his head into my tent above Withins Moor,
saying, ‘Budge over, she’s kicked me out.

‘I’ve been carousing at The Sleepy Shepherd, with my creator Emily,
but her sister Charlotte turned up, and she don’t half like her pints of stout.’

Filled with fear at this apparition, I hastil...

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I met an interesting fellow in the Mountains of Frustration, that remote but beautiful part of northern England, who told me he was a court jester, and proved it with a barrage of jokes and magic tricks, confessing, ‘I like to keep my hand in.’

‘You have a look of a chap I met,’ he said,
‘whose disappearance fascinated the nation,
that of the missing Match Of The Day TV presenter, Harry Shoot...

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As a young ’un, Little Rob was told he was too small,
considering he was five-foot nothing, to run and score with the oval ball.

But he wouldn’t listen, and forged his own path in the 13-aside game,
much maligned in this country, where soccer reigns supreme.

He brought a smile to the hearts of us rugby leaguers,
as he made the opposition big lads wish they could take an ‘early bath’.

I...

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‘I’m indulging in self-pity,’ I mused, reflecting on my latest attempt at seduction,
which hadn’t even got past the starting post.

Just like a newly-crowned king on his throne, I’d had admirers but no partakers in the court of romance.
One particular, dressed so alluring in a nurse’s uniform, used to glance towards me at the bus stop.

However, I was dismayed when I saw her with a good look...

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She was a ruddy-faced nun, banished to a convent to cure her habit of singing cheeky songs,
where she met Sister Superiorer McPeake, who saw in her a talent for musical theatre,
and turned a blind eye so the novice could sneak out at night to star in the Rocky Horror Show.

But one night, sobbing in the street, because she’d realised that
Christ was her only true love, she gazed at the stars ...

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‘Is the round-ball game the opium of the people?’
I asked that humanitarian chap, Gary Linebreaker.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, looked dumbfounded, ‘I’ll have to put that question to
my expert summariser, Billy ‘Fire it in’ Beagle.

But all Billy could say was, ‘We should play a 3 4 2 3 formation, going forward.’
Gary interjected, ‘But a 2 3 4 5 1 one would see us going backward.’

This of c...

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They called him Lusty Les, the tradesman who ran round the ‘bare it all’ beaches of Cornwall,
naked but for an Arabian fez, and wielding a spanner, his favourite tool.

He wanted the female bathers to see his muscled body,
but they were all in the bar of the Old Cornwallians Women’s Rugby Club,
which had kindly let them use the showers, due to a plumbing emergency at the naturists’ camp,
eve...

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On a trip to Africa, hunting a ‘scoop’, I investigated a so-called saintly woman,
regarded by her parishioners as ‘Marvellous’ Mary, who’d left a comfortable life in
the USA to join a monk called Pronsias at his charitable institute.

Her sponsors, a conservationist called Bashful Brook and the US president, Harold Calhoun,
accompanied by his accountant, Murgatroyd ‘Money Mad’ Macroon,
woul...

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The inspiration for this tale is a little dog called Loather,
owned by a chap called Douglas who, when I was still employed as a political journalist,
promised he could could give me the scoop of my career.

Well, after a few drinks had loosened his tongue,
he surprised me by saying he possessed special powers, but wouldn’t elaborate, 
hinting at a shady past in Her Majesty’s service.

He ...

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She was known as the bushwhacker, scourge of elephant hunters of the Transvaal,
since her beloved Dolly Big Ears was taken for her tusks.
However, she was to fall in love with one such killer, Padraig O’Reilly,
a sergeant of The Irish Guards, who vowed to himself, ‘She’s a right pretty gal,
I want to marry her; yes, I truly must.

‘I hope she’ll forgive me for slaughtering her beloved creatu...

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People don’t listen to me any more, now that after the army coup,
our country has a new regime.

Indeed, they call me an old bore who sits in a bar, while everyone’s watching football,
lamenting ‘It all changed when we lost the old queen.’
 
I would tell the young ’uns about the bravest man I ever knew, Endacot Dashitall,
whom I met talking to a tree on top of Mulligawtanny Hill.
 
He was...

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I’m trying to write a song, in the words of a cuddly little dog, because we all love our pets,
and with a bit of promotion from a dog-loving DJ, maybe that wonderful Paul O'Grady,
hope it will climb into the charts (any musicians out there are welcome to offer harmonious chords.)

Song:
‘We’ve lost our jolly little dog, Fiddlypaws, who got lost in the fog,
and feeling lonely sought out the c...

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‘Hail the conquering hero’ I sang to myself, as I perused the English papers,
which extolled my virtues as a resourceful master spy.
 
Everywhere I went in polite society, people wanted to meet Major Bertie Bluemantwit, late of the British Army intelligence section, who’d served with distinction in the conflict in South Africa against the Boer.
 
An article in The Times entitled Brassed Off d...

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Little Stan The Referee
My grandad started watching rugby league after returning to St Helens from war-torn France,
and was heard to remark, ‘They breed ’em tough in Lancashire.’

He’d watched in awe as Albert Briggins, a towering prop forward, cowered before little referee,
Stanley Smiggins who, as a spy in the Great War, had led the Hun on a merry dance,
and was now calmly reprimanding the...

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As we were wandering through a forest full of ancient trees,
my alter ego said he wanted to turn over a new leaf.

As there was a lot of mulch about, the two of us made a squelching noise.

Curious, I asked, ‘Why a new one?’

For all we could see were old leaves, which I suggested
might be due to a raiding party of new-age gardeners from
a commune called Leaf Us Alone.

‘Shush,’ he caut...

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Lament for a fading moon
The British Royal family have gone, 
and reality TV has died a death,
my charity-shop clothes are too dusty 
even for a misanthropic moth, 
who flickers as the moon is set to rise,
while that well-travelled Monty Python,
whose surname rhymes with fading,
wonders what will become of Planet Earth.

Meanwhile, two lovers under a fading moon 
annoy the romantics by...

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She was possessed of a creeping sexuality which
slowly unmasked the innocent – this mysterious
woman I met while travelling to Fortopollathrills,
that newly-discovered island with connections to a canary.

I listened entranced as she reminisced about her studies
at a revered university I’d never heard of,
where she was nicknamed Mathematical Millicent.

But she look perplexed when I quipp...

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Wandering along the beach I mused to myself,
‘What a funny place is this island in The
Canaries called Feurteventura, with its volcanic
rock and crashing surf, not to mention my eccentric host,
Señorita Marmaduke, who puts garlic outside her door.’

‘Maybe she thinks we’re in that country where a
bloodsucking count preyed on young maidens.’
Of course, I was thinking of Transylvania,
where...

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