Happy birthday, 60 Odd. Well celebrated. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall be brief. Also a liar. One of the chief idioms of having got further back into verse via Mexborough (read to Write, 60 Odd), is how it is not only an education. I am also lucky enough to feel a very personal effect. I'll spare readers from the tale of my enrolling at Mexborough Grammar, suffice to say it was an excuse to get a bedsit away from home (thank you Doug and Freda). So as an ex-mex, I feel tickled by the Hughes element. As an Ex MGS, how tickled I am, as Doddy would say.
The point perhaps being that through this essay, I feel an approach to Hughes that is more accessible. Even if I have to The Beano down. Previously I'd staggered into him (a second time) via Sylvia. (I'd met him at MGS but had no idea who he was). In that vacuum were the feminists, and other detractors - odd for a laureate; the grapes gone off? I firmly believe until things went awry for Sylvia (let's not apportion anything) Hughes like anyone would be a regular, if educated, bloke. We can lose site of people when they're labelled, be it perjorative or gandiose.
Anyway, I used to approach the same fields via Kilnhurst. In fact my big brother and cousin went poaching down there - it was dad's childhood haunt. So here is this personal level - we could be writing (or shooting) about the same wildlife (generations apart obviously). To round this out, I had been trying to put a band together since schooldays - finally in Mex, Kenneth Chadwick (guitar/vocs) and Ted Grayson (bass) and a drummer whose name I forget but he used to run along house roofs for a laugh) invited me to join them - at Manor Farm. There have been some grand jam sessions there. But to know that once again I was tripping over Ted (the other one's) tracks... It doesn't make me anything; but I'm trying to say how things that come into our lives through serendipity can mean so much more.
Love the poem Mike - that's all.....
Happy birthday, 60 Odd. Well celebrated. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall be brief. Also a liar. One of the chief idioms of having got further back into verse via Mexborough (read to Write, 60 Odd), is how it is not only an education. I am also lucky enough to feel a very personal effect. I'll spare readers from the tale of my enrolling at Mexborough Grammar, suffice to say it was an excuse to get a bedsit away from home (thank you Doug and Freda). So as an ex-mex, I feel tickled by the Hughes element. As an Ex MGS, how tickled I am, as Doddy would say.
The point perhaps being that through this essay, I feel an approach to Hughes that is more accessible. Even if I have to The Beano down. Previously I'd staggered into him (a second time) via Sylvia. (I'd met him at MGS but had no idea who he was). In that vacuum were the feminists, and other detractors - odd for a laureate; the grapes gone off? I firmly believe until things went awry for Sylvia (let's not apportion anything) Hughes like anyone would be a regular, if educated, bloke. We can lose site of people when they're labelled, be it perjorative or gandiose.
Anyway, I used to approach the same fields via Kilnhurst. In fact my big brother and cousin went poaching down there - it was dad's childhood haunt. So here is this personal level - we could be writing (or shooting) about the same wildlife (generations apart obviously). To round this out, I had been trying to put a band together since schooldays - finally in Mex, Kenneth Chadwick (guitar/vocs) and Ted Grayson (bass) and a drummer whose name I forget but he used to run along house roofs for a laugh) invited me to join them - at Manor Farm. There have been some grand jam sessions there. But to know that once again I was tripping over Ted (the other one's) tracks... It doesn't make me anything; but I'm trying to say how things that come into our lives through serendipity can mean so much more.