When the Dogs Bite

Thursday, 19 March 2026

19th March 2026

morning light

three dogs take turns

in the sunny bit

Coastal Path

Maybe if I was younger --

or maybe when I'm older and care less --

I'll take a walk around the coastal path;

twenty-six hundred miles

around the coastline of England*

but for now, I prefer the comforts of home,

and the warm bodies around me.

Maybe when I'm old and homeless

I'll walk the Coastal Path.

*excludes Scotland and Wales

Wednesday, 18 March 2026

18th March 2026

early dogwalk

watching the sunrise

factory smoke

Tinker Taylor

Sunday dinner on the posh table

set out in the dining room

among the ironing and the fish tank.

No tureens of vegetables

or great chunk of roasted meat;

that makes more washing up

and after cooking all morning

that's my mum's job as well.

If we're luck there's a pudding:

satsuma meringue pie

or tinned prunes and custard.

We count the pips.

Tuesday, 17 March 2026

17th March 2026

casual remark

about my chairdrobe.

Instant decluttering.

My flatmate Richard

tells me there's a job going

at the carpark where he works

and I apply.

An interview with Nadine

and I secure the job

Richard offers a personal recommendation

and I get a yellow vest.

I start on day shifts

Temple Street car park

open by seven AM

and close twelve hours later

a fourteen hour shift four days a week

sitting in a sunshine laden wooden cube

with a cash box and ticket machine

I learn to take abuse

and relish the one-minute-over tickets

where they have to pay the day rate.

Now the car park chain

has gone into administration

and I think of my old teammates

Whatever happened to Julie?

I never had a nervous breakdown

like I did at the next job along.

NCP Closes

Monday, 16 March 2026

16th March 2026

supermarket coupon

offering me a dried fruit

fifties slang

Just in Case...

My father lived through the war.

served in the military,

fought insurgents in Malaysia

and the decision he was left with

was always the wartime slogan

of "Make Do and Mend." Our mum

worked in a munitions factory

met him though a forties dating app

long before Turing cracked the codes

They threw nothing away;

clothes unravelled for wool, cut

into rags or sewn up into new clothes, quilts

and curtains for the spare bedroom

and the old seams and finger-lengths of wool

composted in the garden bean trenches.

Furniture stored and stacked,

sometimes broken into parts,

reorganised, reused, restored

and in the garden, stacks of bricks, tiles;

mounds of soot and fire ashes

and daily walks along the canal banks

fishing out fallen logs for firewood

and discarded bottles to get the deposits

and fresh-laid eggs from the wild ducks and geese.

and in the shed, boxes of tools

nuts and bolts, screws, hardware;

the remains of his father's bakery

and his grandfather's cobbler's bench.

In the land of next-day delivery

and made for pennies by Uyghur slaves in China

I still hear my father's voice:

"That might come in handy."

Sunday, 15 March 2026

15th March 2025

oil tankers

burning in the Hormuz straights

petrol prices

Green for Recycling

It sounds like the absurd plot

to a six-part dark comedy series

about two sisters on the lamb

running someone over

and putting him in a wheelie bin.

Except it's not. It's real,

except for who the killer is,

but the body of a man

was stuffed in a bin

and wheeled to Cash's Park

in Daimler Road in Coventry.

No amusement here

for the family of the man

identity not released

and in this age of traffic cams

and web surveillance

how could this crime remain hidden.

And if you're missing a wheelie bin

the Police would like a word.

Body found in wheelie bin in park

Saturday, 14 March 2026

14th March 2026

supermarket checkout

a man drops his blueberries

treads them flat

Neighbours

Mick's wife died the year we moved in;

now his son is middle aged

and his chihuahua stumbles

peeing on the council sycamore.

We watched Jean's kids grow up

and have kids of their own

now Stu needs constant care

and the visits are fewer than before.

In a quarter of a century

we've never spoken to the people next to Jean

except the one time when we out to protect the wife

against a drunk and abusive husband.

Next to them a couple we've known forever,

convinced there is a portrait in the attic,

for the wife never seems to age

while the kids have grown up and moved out.

We call her Doria, after Wilde's masterpiece

and she laughs, taking it as the compliment

it is intended to be.

Evelyn's house was abandoned:

We're not sure if she died

or went into a care home:

she never spoke to us except to complain the drains were blocked

when it was always her who blocked them.

The daughter sold the house

and now it's being renovated and extended

to double its original size.

Dean and Bella had a handful of daschunds

and chickens at the bottom of the garden

which attracted foxes

and rats.

Their kids have grown into adults

and we still get Christmas cards.

The house between us

is part council - part housing association

who are tardy with repairs

but the tenants are lovely:

always a friendly hello

and a long, slow drag of her morning ciggie.

The people on the other side

played Elvis all day long at full volume

until the lady died

and the husband spent all his days

sunbathing in the garden.

He told us we'd been lovely neighbours

when they moved him to a flat

where he didn't know anyone.

Now it has a young family

who we paid to mend our water pipe

when it flooded their garden.

Their lad plays football in the garden

in smokes pot behind the fence,

while his sister goes clubbing

until the early hours.

Friday, 13 March 2026

13th March 2026

shelves stacked

with knick-knacks and object d'art

Garden wall.

Decluttering

How many books did I discard

when we Kondo'd that first time.

Was it eight years ago? Ten?

Probably a thousand, maybe two

and that's in addition to the thousands

I left behind when moving house

scraped up by the council men

and consigned to a landfill.

Now I have more again

and but none are replacements for those I lost.

Here are tomes of self-defence,

of the works of artists great and small,

and the words of other poets

on whose shoulders I stand.

I can part with none,

at least, not yet,

but all of my Bibles are digital.