In The Poetry

You’re Beautiful

because you’re classically trained.
I’m ugly because I associate piano wire with strangulation.

You’re beautiful because you stop to read the cards in newsagents’ windows
about lost cats and missing dogs.
I’m ugly because of what I did to that jellyfish with a lolly-stick and a big stone.

You’re beautiful because for you, politeness is instinctive, not a marketing
[...]

I was once in New York on St. Patrick’s Day when all the shennanigans go on and I started to wonder, given the number of English people living in New York, what it would be like if they tried to celebrate St. George’s Day in the same style.

The Twang

Well it was St George’s Day in [...]

At the junior school I went to we had a very excitable science teacher and no equipment which was a bit of a bewildering combination. And he used to give us these little missions – they weren’t experiments they were more like missions. And one day he asked me and another kid to go outside [...]