Author Archives: colinhopkirk

My son and his girl sit in deckchairs three metres apart. It is his seventeenth Birthday She left four gifts  A cool white t-shirt A blue mug for his tea A silver Chinese dragon ring. Tonight he sleeps  in her Disneyland pyjamas.

Mr Henry Lingard was the Caretaker (Janitor) at my school. Oi, Humpy! Ling-ers! Lingo! Lurch! It’s Mister Lingard to you, son, and don’t be fooled by this broom, I could snap you like a twig. The eye? I left it in Taegu, it had seen too much, and yes, I do grind my teeth andContinue reading “Mr Lingard”

We make the same excuses why – to not disturb a sleeping sister  or miss a crucial moment on TV. The truth is this feels best outside. My son and I have made the flagstones hum  with our nocturnal archery, risking the disapproval of women  who complain that we are dogs, and shoo us toContinue reading “Night Archers”

I am good with the creative stuff, fiction and non-fiction, comprehension, humanities and arts. I do quite well with projects, understand area and shape, love the science experiments,  the messy fizzing explosions,  me as assistant and cleaner-up, happily contribute to half the colouring in when she gets bored. I am hopeless  with the formalities ofContinue reading “Home Education”

This replaces an earlier version here. Lee Marvin was a drunk, it’s said,  with a temper like a dog, a man who could be hard to love, but was. It’s also said one night he drunkenly refused  to be driven home from the set  of Point Blank, sat on the car while his Director droveContinue reading “The Actor Lee Marvin”

Impossibly bright the snow feet deep, roads ploughed twice a day. My Uncle’s Opel Commodore, polished bronze, hides inside a car shaped drift. And he, cashmere elegant, tall as a house, buck toothed handsome  stoops to lay his hands on my shoulders and smiles. The light inside me impossibly bright. 

Who is she? Who? Who is she?  You’re joking, you are jo-king.  Shut it. Shut. Shut. Up. Shut-up. Creep, she’s cheap, creep, she’s cheap, she-is-cheap.  Who is she then, who? Who?  Mine, she’s mine. Mine mine mine. She. She. Get-lost. Get-lost get-lost.  Mine. Mine mine mine. Mine. She’s Secret, se-cret, se-cret she. Who is sheContinue reading “The Neighbours at 430am”

In all the news coverage and the International Outcry  concerning the Golan,  Land grab settlements  Rubbled families  Katyusha rockets The humiliation of checkpoints Phantoms shuddering the hills, there is a word that no one dares to say. Its in your head right now.

In my late  20s, I saw  Echo and the Bunnymen at Rock City in their faux military stage, coveted the look, found it  on a rack at my local surplus store among Russian greatcoats and Bundeswehr parkas,  an ex-Israeli Army, over the head, neatly patched-up jacket in sand-camouflage. The patching is so neat  I hardly notice thatContinue reading “Ex Israeli Army Jacket”

To Nottingham forty miles out and back in a battered Beetle,  in early summer 83, singing to Orange Juice and Marvin Gaye parking up in Hockley where the Carlsbro Music Centre  ( now gone) had found a cache of 60s Burns guitars, hung in rows strung up by their necks but vitally alive, waiting forContinue reading “Wild Dog!”