Author Archives: colinhopkirk

On Sunny Vale steps a man sits blowing clouds of apple smoke A woman in a onesie inspects a battered broom Gnomes, windmills Coronation bunting Their fibreglass flamingo is giving me the eye

Asbach Alt being a kind of Brandy Sekt being a sparkling wine, dry Schrippen being warm rolls from the baker Volkswagen being our car Grundig being our radiogram Eiffel being mountains and holidays Beckenbauer being heroic Messerschmitt being an Airfix model Gewalt being occasional, surprising Wachsamkeit being normal

A mock-teak radiogram on spindly legs A good radio and amplifier a half decent turntable Forget James Last and his trumpet a go-go Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass Let’s try something else Live! from Folsom Prison or Something New from Africa?

the last robot-king dismantles itself and according to protocol overseen by Bishops and old-money gentry recycles its parts (rarest metals, ancient codes) to a fanfare of trumpets

A stoat in ermine half turning to repel a falling hawk hackles bares its teeth braces for the fray prepares to go full-feral forgets it isn’t real

were always blue in summer Blue morning haze lifting from the valleys Sky blue days, made for larks, wheeling hawks, swallows and boys with box kites running hard to find blue lifting air

Buckle up! Think of this as an adventure a fleet of thirty thousand! You’ll need a catchy name The New Vikings, perhaps or Skegness Armada Arm yourselves, organise Lay in supplies good stuff and plenty of it Think food and water, tools Think durable, think sharp Learn about the stars Choose captains You’ll need goodContinue reading “1953 and all that”

(The barroom butchers) At home in dim-lit kitchensthey hack and hack awayeverything at arms lengthafraid of losing thumbsslicing thumbs and fingersand barroom reputations

claims to smoke his own bacon slipping flitches up his chimney which sounds like something Sid James might have said in that long-lost film, Carry on Butcher a classic film I’ve recently invented

(Recovering the bodies, Falkland Islands) Seen from above it’s almost medieval what, with all the tents and flags the young men lying on the ground the distant shoreline rocks and stunted trees the whole scene blanketed with snow My friend, Bills, was part of an army detail that, post-war, searched for and retrieved dead ArgentinianContinue reading “White Pavilions”