Hi Greg Glad that a connoisseur like yourself appreciated my Joni poem. 80 today! It's hard to believe. Did you get the two buried references to Barbra? My wife converted me to her talents much later in life.

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I stand humbly corrected.
I can only say that I was brung up reading The Grudian, which has tainted my life, spelling and understanding of a greta deal
😉

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How do you know for sure that it was 'Sir Kier Starmer'?
Were you in an adjoining stall?

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Hi Greg Always good to hear from you now that I am no longer being 'inspired'. My poem to Seamus is quite an old one now which I am sure you've seen before!

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You were quick off the mark, Greg! Just heard on telly that it was the Beano's 85th so I posted the poem. It was originally in 'Work Horses' so is well over 10 years old. I'm like Led Zep I don't do 'new' any more just keep repackaging the classics!

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That was fantastic, Steve! Can't believe I'd never seen that one before. PS Looking forward to reading one of your Ukraine poems at the launch later this month. A great privilege.

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Hi Greg

I found a clip from The Fawlty Towers episode with Bernard Cribbins.

https://nortonsafe.search.ask.com/search?q=Mr+Hutchinson+Fawlty+Towers&page=1&ctype=videos&geo=en_GB&doi=2020-04-28&cmpgn=mar20&o=APN12179&p2=%5EEQ%5Emar20%5E&ueid=50d99701-1706-401b-9b6f-d61472206408&qo=navTop

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Re: Merely a Player
Thanks so much for your comments, Greg and for providing the historical backdrop of which I was unaware. It makes sense of the journeying aspects. Much appreciated!

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Hi Greg, thanks again for your recent comments. Much appreciated you stopping by to read. And thanks for the invite to Write Out Loud Woking's Zoom event. I'm traveling next week Wednesday but will drop you a line in due course. I'm mostly keen to get to a live event too and see there is now one in Worcester, so I may even pop along to that next time I'm in that neck of the woods. 😃 Thanks again, Tom.

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Thanks, Greg. Yes, I had forgotten the Mid-Hants Line stuff. Thanks for this; some nice stories there.
John

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Thanks Greg for you kind words. I was a bit worried about the poem because it is, I suppose, a 'warts and all' description. However, Martin was a lovely man. He was happy jogging along the way he was and although he didn't look after himself he never did a bad thing to anyone else. It's been a bloody awful two years for everyone and the loss of my mother at the start of lockdown and now my brother certainly isn't making it any better. I hope you and yours had some kind of Christmas.

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Hi Greg

Sorry, only just seen your comment re Orison.

Yeh, I did wonder why you hadn't mentioned it - I had the opening and closing poems very much set in my mind for a long time, precisely because they bookend so very well. I had a real little epiphany as I played with that Newton's cradle, not long after my friend's death.

Oh give over, it's not too clever for you - it's easy, really ?

And thank you.

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Hi Greg

I didn't want to air the Brexit debate on the poetry blog, but I do agree that Brexit has lost the UK some friends in Europe. The recent treatment of some EU nationals at the UK border (detention centres etc) has been shameful and things like this, almost imperceptibly, have an impact.

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Thanks for your comments in my poems, Your words inviting to write, thanks for that.

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Thank you Greg for your comment on my bio poem Aye, Wingate. And yes, 'Johnnie's cafe' , which had been a fixture in the village since the early 50's ( sadly closed around 10 yr ago) still had all the original 50's decor: wooden seats, counter, fixtures etc. So Beamish museum bought it & are rebuilding it in the new 1950's village. But, sadly, the way things are going they might not have the money to complete it. And, as you say, if you visit these days it's more like a ghost town ?

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Hi Greg thank you so much for your comments. Things come to mind, I do suffer still, always will apparently.
One thing I have held onto is my hatred of the BBC. They reported and told the Argentinians we were getting ready to assualt Goose Green, so The Argie reinforced Goose Green With 1000 more men, our lads were outnumbered 3 to 1.
Then many of their bombs were not exploding they hit my ship and the bombs didn't explode, they had the detonators set wrong... the fucking BBC reported this! Consequently our ships started blowing up what seemed everywhere. Bastards.
I know a lot of lads who if the BBC embedded someone with them they'd find themselves with a bullet in the back during the next action.
There was a sadness... we were fighting kids with three months training who'd been given a gun, canon fodder for our well trained professionals. We all felt an admiration for their airforce...so brave with low survival chances. They didn't have the fuel to "dog fight" or make much manoeuvring and only had five minutes over target or they would splash down in the Atlantic getting home. But they still came, their limitation of speed made our Harriers look far better than they were. I got that from a couple of Harrier pilots I was drinking with.

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Hi Greg
photo at Soller, great little railway from the capital en route to Deya, Majorca. You'd love it, Ray too!

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Hi Greg Thanks for the encouragement. Just hope a few people pick up on them!

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Yes, Greg, that was the one that got me started again after all that time. I had eight amazingly prolific years in which I must have written getting on for 300 poems until three years ago I stopped again. It is all a bit of a mystery to me. It seems to me that the real poems come unbidden and I don't need to chasing after the ones that don't need to be written.

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You're very welcome, Maria. Hope you stay, and add more poems to this site.

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Thank you for your lovely comment on my poem and your welcome- It was a while back, but I have only just seen it ?
Maria

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Greg, PIPS - glad you liked and what a plucky chap for sure. P. ?

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Glad you stopped to read Scroll Greg and got deep meaning from it.

?

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Greg, Creaking Gate, yes don't we all hope it isn't that ongoing. But then these events have been around for rather a long time - didn't I read somewhere about the 'seven plagues of …. in one of the ancient texts? Heaven forbid. P

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You're absolutely right, Phil. Sorry the word hadn't reached you. We cancelled March's poetry night at the Lightbox last week. And the Lightbox is closing its doors tomorrow for the foreseeable.

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Greg, Leave to Speak - appreciate the comments - thanks. BTW I take it the Lightbox won't be open for business as usual this time round. Am I right?

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Thanks for that Lightbox message, Phil. Yes, little Kayla was marvellous. I have two lovely pictures of her which I have put on our Facebook site - maybe I should post them here, too. Her dad said it would be all right. There were 21 floor readers, plus Pete the featured poet and Rodney the compere. And thanks for your comment on my Three Kings poem. That was a pub where myself and fellow former newspaper colleagues met once a month from March 2013 until earlier this year. It changed hands, lost its rhinoceros, and we have moved to a pub a few staggers away, across the road. It's not the same - our pints often slide off the table and crash on the floor. Although maybe the subject of the poem has something to do with that ... that has never occurred to me before ...

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Greg - I really enjoyed the Light House event, such a pleasant atmosphere - could you please let me have an idea of the numbers in attendance - I usually like to keep a note of these in my project book. Thought the African kid and family was simply fab. Blessings. P. ?

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Hello Greg and thanks for the message. Am not sure if you know but I am on a determined campaign to have some of this junk mail (as delivered by our posties) stopped. I have 2 short eco poems (both seen by HRH Charles) to recite and will carry a stock of my Opt out forms for anyone wishing to stop receiving all this wasteful garbage through the door. If I could present early-ish - it would enable me a chance to scarper after the break, as I don't drive any more. Blessings. P.

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Thanks for your note on The Ties That Bind, Greg. Wrote itself really quickly, funnily enough ?

Deffo going in the next collection! And in the set, soon as I get it learned!

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Hello Greg- thanks for the comment about Meditterranean August - have only just realized that incredibly it was POW
Jennifer

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Hi Greg,

Thanks for taking some great photographs of us all from William Cornelius Harris Publishing Poets on Saturday at the Free Verse Poetry Book Fair. Would it be ok to use one of them for some publicity and profile image? I will give you credit.

All the best

George

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Thanks for posting 'Midnight Train to Bulawayo' - I enjoyed it! Were you there in 1997? How long did you stay?
As you know, I grew up in NR/Zambia from 1955 - 75. Last time I was there was in 1971 - a weekend trip to Salisbury for shopping and a new hairdo from Kitwe, on the Copperbelt in Zambia. I spent between 68 - 74 travelling and working between UK and Zambia. Back to Africa every time I got too homesick and saved up for the next trip to UK.
My little brother went to St George's in Salisbury so we'd go down to take him out for a Sunday lunch at Meikles every so often but I only went to Bulawayo twice on the way to SA.
I have added another African poem from my 1968 notebook to my profile... yes, I still have it. Ha-Ha!

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Write Out Loud without you Greg not even worth thinking about you are one of the main anchors and those two were just a mere scratch on this huge huge network!

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Thanks for tapping me on the shoulder about that, Nigel. It's the second time in a week I've made a mistake like that. Expecting my redundancy notice from Write Out Loud any day now ...

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Hi Greg,

Time Travel

To go back to a certain day
Knowing the words spoken in every detail
Might make you do or say something
That each comment uttered says without doubt
I have heard that poem told before
Not by a different person but you.

Just my way of saying you put down April instead of May
for the next meeting of Write Out Loud

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Hi Greg Good to hear from you and pleased that my little vignette has gained your approval!

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Hi Greg; re The Old Kent Road. So pleased you read this , I hoped it might fit the bill. I do so enjoy these cartography exploits. Just like to slip one in now and again.
Of course that word should have been horde, it will be remedied. thanks for spotting it. Re open mikes, I think enjoying what you write is important and trying to infect the listeners. I hope that works for me at least. Not quite ready for a pulpit yet. Re Bricklayers Arms, it started life as a passenger terminus, and i'm sure I read that royal trains ran there at least once . An earlier version of i'm a celebrity get me out of here probably.

all the best as always. Ray

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Thanks for the ethical chocolate-buying tips, Colin, much appreciated. I used to buy Divine from our tea trolley back in the day - trouble is, I link that memory with the traumatic one of inadvertently flinging a cop of coffee through the vent of a very expensive computer. It sizzled for a bit, smoke started coming out, and then it went bang. Heads turned up and down the office. If they'd taken it out of my wages I'd still be paying for it now.

And thanks for your donation commitment to Write Out Loud, too. Very good of you, mate.

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you were asking about chocolate Greg - Divine is widely available and has extremely good ethics and traceability. Vivani is a German brand with good social and organic production policies - I particularly like their 85% dark and they do a 92% which is also nice - but only available in smaller shops and online. Equal Exchange is another good brand. Check out this link and watch for when they do a 20% off offer - yes they stock G&B's which I guess remains an 'ethical' company within the Mondelez empire:

http://www.ethicalsuperstore.com/category/groceries-and-everyday/chocolate/chocolate-bars/?limit=192

It's good that the large multinationals have to some extent embraced the Fairtrade purchasing ethic but as you can see from the following link the situation remains rather confused and even though Cadbury's Dairy Milk says it's Fairtrade there is no guarantee the actual chocolate has come from a Fairtrade source as whatever Cadbury's buys ends up in their general supply chain. So the reality is you might be eating chocolate that has been produced under poor working conditions or even child labour.

http://www.traidcraft.co.uk/blog-entry/does-cadburys-still-smell-of-roses-when-it-comes-to-fairtrade

I know WoL is not really the place to bang on about the rights and wrongs of Fairtrade chocolate but it's a subject close to my heart and we bang on about all manner of things here so why not, if only for a minute.

As I write Steve P has just sent me a begging letter so I promise to make up for my moment of campaigning and donate to WoL's worthy cause via PayPal. ?

All the best,
Colin.

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Ok Greg thanks for the clarification. I did submit three, so fingers crossed!


Ray

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Hi Greg. I'm getting a couple poems ready for the paradox competition before 31 July. Can you kindly tell me if stuff I've posted on WOL cannot be included, as most of it has been posted there. Cheers.

Ray

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Please, think nothing of it Greg. Football can of course raise hackles , like Gilzean's tackles (and headers that he was famous for)!

Ray

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Thanks for picking up on "1970" Greg, my first year as a pro muso. Much time spent mooching about trying to build up contacts(using the phone in the underground station believe it or not). Saturdays often to Spurs as mentioned. I have a diary for the year, and noted all the matches I attended. I can't find any games with Chelsea, but I note Spurs beat L'pool 1-0 . Some were achingly depressing like Wolves 0-0 in December with the walk home following. The most distilled aggression was felt for Arsenal at the time!
My aim was to write a poem in a style hopefully similar to the ones you often pen, with lots of detail to flesh out the journey. Always a pleasure.

Ray

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What a great story, Ray. Frank clearly wanted to teach your dancer how to yodel, too. You must have so many of these tales!

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I just read your review of the Bronte poetry event and love the journalistic skill - apropos of nothing I picked up the mention of Frank Ifield by Terry Andrex. Curiously I worked with him at Scarborough Floral Hall in 1977. I had done the journey in an Austin Countryman to be with one of the dancers (19, I was 33), so you can see why.
There was almost a skirmish as Frank had his eye on her from the start. I don't think he pulled her but I was off balance and maybe she played on my jealousy a bit. You can't keep a good yodeller down I say.

Thanks for reading Ray (Southern Jessie!)

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I was a bit previous Greg about the email! A confusing place is t'internet sometimes. I tried to get into reporting when I left school but failed brilliantly - in those days it was a notebook and pencil behind the ear.(music and photography beckoned).
Yes, I would love to come along to the Woking and have a day out. I am promised to a party and tinkling the ivories the day before, but Phyllosan at the ready in case of premature expiration.

All the best Ray

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Thanks for your comment on Ghosts On The Platform - I hadn't made the connection but had to immediately go and put that tune on after you mentioned it. Lovely!

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Sorry Greg just read your message on my profile page so forget all you have read. sincerely, Mr Paranoid.

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Hi Greg. In the wake of "Mohamed" on the site I am now a bit paranoid, so I got an email about the WOL open mike evenings (ostensibly from you) with an invitation to the do in the park at Woking sent also to all the usual suspects! I just wanted to verify if this genuine. Sorry for the inconvenience but with so many emails addresses on it I felt I had to make sure.

regards, Ray

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