Author Archives: colinhopkirk

Lucky Turk feel proud  we share such history Don’t forget how good it is to be here and to know your place Its comforting  Be a little grateful  Feel free to roam our dumps take all the broken things you need We are not greedy Be our guest Recycle our radios our white goods sellContinue reading “Gastarbeiter”

Her nervous chatter What if there’s a burglar? Where shall I pee? Will the dogs bark? Unnerved by night sounds –  somewhere a door slams, a distant engine fires, our mad hen stumbles round her run. In time she sleeps, her breath  draws deep and steady, and listening contents me. Past midnight in her sleepContinue reading “Camping with my daughter”

The shouts of pigs torn from sties tied down at dawn by practised hands by men who care with fallen fruit and table scraps and know it is unwise to name.  They know what these days need to keep it clean and stand up straight. Whisky for shame, the arc of the axe,  quiet workContinue reading “Killing Days”

I don’t mind if your bread has risen less  than you had hoped. You, who does not bake, and never will, have wrestled with strange dough,  burned uncertain wrists, looked both ways and walked across the road to bring me this.

It was only a matter of time. After years of hoarding the fourth drawer down has finally gone off the rails. A white ceramic drawer handle an old penknife with black bone handle jewellers pliers with striped handles two rolls of masking tape a roll of M3 garden tape two sprung 5m metal tape measuresContinue reading “The 4th Drawer Down”

new leavesshake their thingshimmyingin sunlighttrippingthe light fantasticeach emerald stepatomic footworkdanced for uson air

These days we use knives, slicing into gin or carefully quartering to stuff a hen or dress a summer salad. I remember it differently as yellow electricity, the sourest thing yet, enough to make your  toes curl and how we used to dare to see who could  eat one whole. Dare – first the flesh Continue reading “Lemon Dares”

There is a photograph. The grass, tough, long, some kind of marram, grew everywhere on thin soil over sand in the grounds of the  abandoned monastery where anyone could  pull in and set up camp. Each time I would  dig a hole my height find branches, overlay  with smaller branches then more, until I’d built Continue reading “Picnics near Venlo”

We have been talking the Wren and I,  and have agreed to divide the garden. I think we have agreed the hedge is his along with it’s spiders  and all invertebrates  that live therein. The compost heaps  are his, and all the cracks in all the trees. I keep the shed and it’s appurtenances exceptContinue reading “Garden Negotiations”

Almost a year from backache that wasn’t  to a downstairs iron bed  my mother chooses  to see me, but not to speak, within a week refuses to see, disappearing into books and crosswords argues fiercely with my father, holds tight to my sister and is cared for with kindness and tact by men and womenContinue reading “The end of something”