This poem reminds me of a beautiful girl, a warm summer evening far away from England and the Absinthe we drank together. Be Drunk by Baudeliere* One must be for ever drunken that is the only thing that matters. To avoid the burden of time weighing heavily on a mans shoulders that bends his back … More Green Godesses
Would you like to take Opium with me? The question is posed by an Indian guy, an Artist, probably in his early thirties with whom I and some friends are sitting in the back room of a nondescript little art shop in a dusty little town on the edge of the Thar Desert. I really … More Opium in the afternoon
Late afternoon, early April, London, I have just been decanted from the 52 bus outside Willesden library. I am wearing what has become my second skin of late since coming back from India, a puffer jacket, it keeps off the April chill & the wind blowing across the concrete & paving stones and tarmac as … More Rice an Peas
A she once told me that I thought only in terms of black & white, that in my world each decision I made boiled down to a & right & wrong, maybe she was right, perhaps I did think like that. Her view was as I see it now something she considered wider, more evolved, … More Black White Grey
The wife with a fine beard is a greater prize than a herd of camels & gives a sweeter scent. The cockerel sings each morning and worries not if there is ghee in the kitchen storeroom All lathis come from the tree but never has one given good fruit The bullock carts … More Old Indian proverbs that never were
On one of those balmy evenings that happen so effortlessly in Goa I am out on my trusty, slightly rusty scooter whizzing along a quiet road lined on each side every few metres by coconut palms. Each time I pass a a tree the sound waves of my bike bounce back at me. I think … More Travels on a rusty scooter
I have walked past this tuc tuc day after day, year after year each time I come to Goa. When I first noticed it against the wall of a cottage next to Patnem beach rusting away I could only think of the word eyesore. Why didn’t somebody just get rid of the bloody thing, tidy … More The Tuc-Tuc that was really a cycle
I want some music in my life, so evening finds me in a bar in Agonda, a long moon shaped bay fringed with palm trees and beach shacks & for those with the inclination ample watering holes in which to have a drink or two. As I count myself as one of those people … More Night & Morning
Sunday morning and I begin to stir, the dinosaur rumbles into life, these last few days after several years of always waking crazily early I am instead waking several hours later than usual, what is this I wonder, why the change, a month into my time in India? Why now? There’s an unfamiliar sound outside … More La vie sauvage
Dark brown eyes kohl framed look at me across a dining table in London’s west end on a weekday lunchtime in late October. After the best part of four years this is the first occasion on which me and the X have sat and talked together on any meaningful level, it’s arguable it has been … More The Lunch
