Topical Pomes of Philip LEE

Newtown: a ville in hell

one minute man is going for his gun

the next your friend and teacher fall oh hell

let's hide as if the Britishers had come

it's Johnny marching home from old Saigon

hurrah for macaroni such a swell

one minute man is going for his gun 

the next it's study history on the run 

from second amendment Liberty's knell 

let's hide as if the Britishers had come 

to setting sun and mother nature's son 

the shots a never-ending rebel's yell 

one minute man is going for his gun 

the next it's Bungalow Bill and his mom 

tiger-hunting all-American bull 

let's hide as if the Britishers had come 

defend us Lord against the redcoat scum 

and break King George's mercenary spell 

one minute man is going for his gun 

let's hide as if the Britishers had come

horse-u-eat

it says here

ingredients may vary

more than one country of origin

then

stuff about groundnut allergies

that's a laugh 

nothing confirming 

age of victim sex species 

or 

anything about unnatural decease 

for the record 

even if I weren't in two minds 

inhabitant of more than one country 

and

a time-served vegetarian 

I still wouldn't give a monkey's 

serves you all right 

cheapskates 

ha ha 

respect

Pope Julian's Retreat

good on yer cobber for peddling

the meddles of Bradley Wiggins

or is it Manning

winning geek of the lowdown load

did you expect Swedish customs

not threats of lethal injunction

or is it Muggings

whose ass sang in the comfy chair

man of the bored pretty boy smiles

you shuffled off on women's libs

or is it Manly

doomed to die a second-rate shag

poetry republic
3 members welcome readers/writers/critics

Books we've read

The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

View this group on Goodreads »

odd of the Liver Bird

odd of the liver bird

by Philip Lee

deus nobis haec otia fecit

-Virgil

eh blue which god vouchsafed this perch

so far above the ships at berth

in fervent scenes of graft or work

and did I plead for such a perk

to stand and squawk for what it's worth

a-skulking here all out to lurch

d'ye ken the gulls on yonder church

St. Nicks by name that comb the earth

like sparrows while in belfries lurk

the nightshift bats none miss the quirk

of early worms for there's a dearth

and precious nowt without a search

but micky blue to whom the beak did dirge

flew fleet and dumbly by the giant's verge

next up a passing heron heard

the windy whistling liver bird

to whom this sounded quite absurd

well hark at you disgusted said

to sit atop of all this lead

whyever don't you turn your head

in heaven's name but drop your guard

that jobless men from bars now barred

may drink to how unjust and hard

life is or like the Coogan kid

step father in that film he did

the time by art and dodge outbid

but so in awe of being over-looked

you'd only boo a goose whose gander's cooked

not so I swear by docker's hook

and don't deserve that last rebuke

nor play the drake to sleeping duck

you kick me when I'm down my luck

don't think I'd baulk to plant this duke

between the bills of any crook

that tried to take me for a rook

he's drunk who thinks a fancy's fluke

has pitched me o'er this pool of pluck

some god it was that passed the buck

from eyrie roof in reign to spook

those seamen who his rule forsook

so on the bird would plead of passing folk

if any of them knew which godly bloke

till late one night the bird awoke

amid colliding coils of smoke

to list as owl his tuppence spoke

with copper claws you craft and grope

a feather-brain on tether rope

and brazen wings you're past all hope

the myth of you is out of vogue

a specious cant your windy brogue

you're but the idol of a rogue

no god gave you this perch the globe

to watch no lord of patient Jobe

but bad king John in ermine robe

with falcon seal this borough he enrolled

in subs for which the barons pledged much gold

a moment's whistling wake was held

then dockers' hooks from decks were hurled

and ancient stories of the gulled

retold their souls from oceans pulled

and slaves transported half the world

to die in chains new lives revelled

as like from kings and queens rebelled

the empire's folk their flags unfurled

and union jacks from yardarms culled

the copper hulks turned rotten hulled

to sink while round the globe they curled

their feathers brained and nuts unshelled

thus godforsaken liver bird was penned

to roost in effigy at pier's end

Sock it to 'em!

poetry republic
3 members welcome readers/writers/critics

Books we've read

The Society Of The Poem
by Jonathan Raban

Literary Theory: An Introduction
by Terry Eagleton

View this group on Goodreads »

Story Engine

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Story Engine

Churning hot air and the ether of e-fonts in its turbine, the Story Engine goes into hyper-drive. No longer is it enough for authors to package-up well-turned novels with fully-rounded characters in harmonious plots. Nowadays, character has to be spat out over min. seven vols.; plot extruded and cut into NBC House-bites (a modern novel skim-reads more like the extended treatment for an episode); and crafted writing gives over to pellucid style and “voice.” Indeed, whatever its timbre, a modern author's sarnd has to incorporate the gum-chewing, side-of-mouth rant of a Smart Alec on CiF (Come-off-it it's Free). While kerosene and steam explode in the heat and vortex of jet burners; it's chocks away as the modern serial novel reaches escape velocity two paras after leaving the tarmac. XL5 is off its trolley, Robbie the RoboWriter at the helm, Meccanoids and Clangers asking for his eta.

Where did all this spring from? Was it predicted? Who's the suspect, eh? George Orwell, writing in the late Nineteen Forties caught a glimpse of the future that is now showing. In his dystopian novel, 1984, he envisaged a totalitarian society where proles (the proletariat) are addicted to Victory Gin and porno/crime thrillers. These “novels” are not written by authors, but 'composed' upon machines that print-on-demand to formulae. The hero's girlfriend, Leila, is one of the middle-class Party-maids charged with programming the story engine; trusted by her controllers as immune to its corrupting ideas. For Leila has no creative input, there is no need. Demand is determined by market forces, and algorithms built-in to the machines produce the variations in character & plot to keep the novels just that bit different from each other. In fact, using an unexplained technology (Chaos?) best-sellers are regularly turned up. In 1984, even hit songs are produced by machines, though again Orwell doesn't go into detail about exactly how.

Surely we are not there yet? Surely 1984, which used to loom at us from around the corner - I'm one of those old farts who remember Punk Rock starting out in 1976 – is still some ways off? In fact, nowadays the future is a rather benign mirage, dimming and getting further off as time rolls on. We've almost erased its otherness. And anyway, today we ARE the future! Look at our technology! We have Search, Edit and Translation keys, customised Spelling, Grammar & Thesaurus Apps.. At the flick of a finger, we employ Meat Grinders, weasel-word weeders, Style & Format wizards. Why, we zonked writers sit tablet in hand parked on Mulholland Heights calling up ambient noise to transport us to the souks of Marrakesh or the icy wastes of Anarctica. But, Hey, composition is still in the hands of the individual, right? Writers get to be producer, director, camera operator & star rolled into one. The author is still the coolest dude to be, innit? Wronk!

Arthur Miller and Marilyn Munro split in 1958. Angela Carter never got to write any of the bestsellers she had in her. And Gore Vidal has joined Pan in the foothills of Olympus. The dream is over. Nowadays, even well-off authors are wage-bond labourers contracted to produce only what they are certified to know. Sorry, fellows, quoting Pink Floyd this early in the millennium, but Welcome To The Machine!

Previously on Goodreads... (back in the future) a nasty spat broke out between two contributors over a definition of the term dystopia. The details of the dispute, of how the 'red, red kovvy' ran and ran despite the efforts of Kofi Anan, are not pertinent here; however the barney threw up some interesting sub-threads. One of these related to the work of Winston Smith: Leila's boyfriend and hero of 1984. He toiled in another division of the vast Ministry of Truth, not producing works of fiction, but editing (fictionalising) back copies of The Times. It was his job to find, alter or delete old articles and reports which contradicted Official History or current Party Policy. Slips of edited-out text were dropped down a tube which, Winston believed, fed the fires of a basement boiler room. Little did he know, of course, the tube was not a good place to get rid of evidence he was cheating the system. Another layer of editors checked the falling slips on behalf of the Thought Police.... and so on. My point? On the Goodreads site, it is possible for a contributor to post an offensive remark unmoderated. Dozens of people may comment on it before for the originator goes back and alters or deletes the offensive words as though they had never been written! When the resultant narrative (called a 'thread') is read back, it has a middle and an end, but no actual beginning! Like the poems of Sappho, the original remarks can only be reconstructed from the quotes of others! But surely Goodreads' servers keep a record of everything deleted, altered or not?

Access to information is the way of the beast, power resting in the hands of those with the most knowledge. At the same time, the printed text withers away and we enter an era in which everything becomes fluid. At the lowest level, it's rather like we never invented writing at all. We're headed back to something more akin to oral tradition. Dozens of different versions of a story may circulate at the same time, multiple copies generating a canvas of infinite possibility. Thus Aeneas may die in the sack of Troy, or escape to Carthage, or even head straight on to found Rome. On the next level up are meta texts you may subscribe to; they are recapitulations of threads with the biggest contradictions resolved by arbitration, and the least left as incongruities. A simple example would be where a character is portrayed as being utterly evil in some sub-threads and misunderstood in others, cf Richard the Third. This generates a narrative line where the character's ambiguities are emphasised. But as everyone in the group may erase or cut and paste, who may retrieve the source code? At the upper level, there are the Master files, available only to Moderators. Every keystroke is recorded, requiring a special parser to trawl through the binary texts, sourcing conflicts, identifying common themes and predicting trends. Rather like being able to read texts in the ancient Latin, Greek & Aramaic originals, these Reading Room Keyholders are a small but powerful gang.

Fan fiction has of course played a huge role in creating Story Engines which recycle character, scenario and even plot to produce new works. Of course, much of what is created thus is naïve pastiche, comic parody or simple dross. Those writers who manage to attract a fan-base of their own are able to stake claims on the swelling ground. Lucy Hocking is the prime example of this, a member of multiple Trekky/Buffy clubs she artfully carved out a franchise-free pitch for her gothic/teen/campus novels. Fans download her speedily drafted vols, editing the spelling, grammar and continuity errors her daytime job doesn't allow time for. If she is ever stuck for a plot idea, she has only to open her comments box and Fans earn much kudos (though not many scudos) from her open acknowledgements. In under two years, she is able to sell-out to a conventional publishing house, ditching her fan-based Story Engine for the usual troupe of agents, editors and the other groupies Fame & Fortune is eager to supply.

Fan fiction isn't that new, Trekkies and Dr Who fans have been sharing their words since the early 70s. Nor is live group writing. Many years ago, I went on the road with a theatre company - an outfit that made a new play each performance by brainstorming ideas from its audiences. At the start of the show, they performed a quick sketch to get the audience in the mood and posit an idea. Straight after, they came out of character and set up a flip chart in the middle of the stage area. Then they asked the audience how they thought the sketch should continue. Every single word the audience threw at them was written up on the chart, and in the process skilfully creating a plot. Finally the actors invited members of the audience to come on stage and help perform the play that they themselves had come up with. For the actors, every performance was a gruelling test of creative response, improvisation skill and sheer patience. You would think it a miracle how they could go on doing a different show every day/night. Yet, spending a few days with them, I began to see there was a formula behind their way of working and that each show was, in more than one sense, no different than the others. The lack of an author's hand combined with the collective subconscious of the audience produced a kind of scatological romp of a show. For example, a youngish lad in the audience shouted out, “the policeman farts!” He was then asked to play not the policeman, but the policeman's fart, wafting across the stage and knocking out the robber.

After the show, I told my friend (one of the company) how funny and original it was. He replied, “Oh yes, the fart. Usually get that two or three times a week.” Though I was still stunned by it, my friend's six months on the road had shown him most everything an audience could come up with. As an engine of creativity, the public mind is, well, unsubtle in its predictability. It seems the shared, live nature of such story telling lifts and transforms the dynamics of a schoolroom snigger to an acceptable form of public enjoyment. Just as the chance to have rubbed e-shoulders with Lucy Hocking boosts her audience; contributing something you believe is original (to her spelling, her grammar, her plot-lines) and thereby share her glory, allows you to enjoy participating in her success.

So what do I say in conclusion? Write your own?

Sock it to 'em!

Tories Cancel Riots

The 2020 London International Riots have been cancelled by the Kultcha Sec., Baroness Toss-Er-Jewels. When telephoned by the Sock Puppet, she had these words to say:

Baroness Toss-Er-Jewels: Who the hell said you could run a story like this?

Baroness Toss-Er-Jewels
by Sir Edwin Land-Sneer

The Sock Puppet: Philip Lee, the author and proprietor, Ma'am.

BT-J: And who does he think he is?

TSP: Well, he's a free agent; answers to no one but himself.

BT-J: In that case, you can tell him from me, he's going to need a jolly good brief when this gets out.

TSP: Righty-ho! He knows quite a lot of dangerous people does Philip.

BT-J: And what's that supposed to mean?

TSP: Just that he keeps company with some rather scurvy rogues with broken teeth and fingernails.

BT-J: Look here, I won't be intimidated, you know! We - at what-used-to-be-called the British government - take a very dim view of incitement. You can tell your Mr Lee that from me!

**

Later on, over a couple of gin-and-wotsits at the Carlo Marx Fan Club, the Sock Puppet had private words with Sir Bendy Copper, Chief of the Metropolitan Whatchamacallit.

Sir Bendy Copper: You should have come to me in the first place, old son, the old Kultcha Sec's not even on the case, sticking her pearly neck out is what. And organised rioting is not even an Olympic event for her to be mouthing off about. Comes under your Ministry of Justice and Peace.

Sir Bendy Copper
(Photo-Fit-Up)

TSP: Was there an economic motive behind cancelling the riots?

SBC: Not as you'd notice. I think they were simply afraid of letting in all them foreign teams.

TSP: Such as?

SBC: Well, take your French for a kick-off. As soon as landing on the quayside they'd be setting fire to our muttons. Then, you can't beat the French at the art of building barricades from bric-a-brac. We'd've had all the totters of South London up in arms. Added to that, you'd get the old Gallic hurling of cobble-stones, which is not something you want to be on the receiving end of, you take it from me.

TSP: They learnt their lesson at Agincourt, then?

SBC: Certainly did, the cheek of them!

TSP: But surely, hasn't it been hundred of years since the streets of London were paved with cobble-stones?

SBC: (Tapping his nose) Planning on bringing their own, weren't they!

TSP: The rotters!

SBC: Then there's all that garlic to consider!

TSP: Egad! So who else was planning to crash the London twenty-twenty?

SBC: You name 'em! Whirling Dervishes, Brazilian Mud Wrestlers, Etruscan Troubadours, Chinese Winkle Pickers – anyone with an 'istory of grudge, Peruvian Gold Diggers, Californian Longshore Drifters, Vietnamese Street Vendors, The Whole Belgian Police Force, Masai Warriors, assorted Zulus, Greek Hoplites, Nude Amazon Booksellers, we could go on...

TSP: I'm sure we could...

**

Later still, the Sock Puppet talked via tele-conferencing link to Hosanna Bomb-Laden, President of GAGA, the Great American Gunlaw Association.

TSP: Will the US now curtail its special relationship with the UK?

Hosanna Bomb-Laden: Let me put you straight, sonny-boy, we want to see the UK remain a strong archipelago off the European coast.

Hosanna Bomb-Laden
(Artist's Impression)

TSP: And what of the “Little Boats of England”?

HB-L: Heck, you gotta secure those borders somehow! You can't see off the Indians and Chinese with a few privateers and an out of date fishing fleet. Your whole country needs to become a modern aircraft carrier.

TSP: Oh, right-on, Hosanna-Bomb!

HB-L: You know, we remember the days when the UK was the only bucket of light east of Nantucket.

TSP: Brings a tear to one's eye!

HBL: The country that gave us stockings-suspenders, horseradish sauce and five-day cricket!

TSP: Tally-ho!

HB-L: Just don't drink the tea is all!

TSP: Thank you so much for your precious time, Mr. President. Amex card alright?

HB-L: Do nicely, boy!

Stitch 'Em Up!

Fried Bread - Appellation d'origine contrôlée

The Sock Puppet: Mr Bread, it's said you mean all things to all men...

Fried Bread: Hi, how're ya doin? Sadly no. It's only true to say I have meant few things to several men.

Fried Bread's on the radio again!

TSP: So what do you mean to women?

FB: Even fewer things and to far less of them, but I am widely loved by the fairer sex... more often as a secret passion. Indeed a good many women have been warned to avoid me at all costs.

TSP: How would you describe yourself?

FB: Light, crisp, and laden with woof.

TSP: What is your secret?

FB: That would be telling, wouldn't it? Let us just say, I succeed in being thoroughly buttery by remaining utterly stale to the core.

TSP: How would you like to be remembered?

FB: As a pleasant after dinner taste, dear boy. My imitators leave a lardy smear on the tongue.

TSP: When was your finest hour?

FB: Serving my sovereign, I think, or guesting at a posh nosh.

TSP: How should you be prepared?

FB: Natural gas. Swear by it!

TSP: Straight out the pan?

FB: And into the cake-hole! With a brace of tinned tomatoes, of course

TSP: Who would play you in the film of your life?

FB: Erm, Huge... whathisname?

TSP: Huge Lorry?

FB: No, not that oaf! He couldn't play housey-housey! Huge Grant, I mean. Or Nigel Kennedy could have a stab at the old cackass. Next question!

TSP: What is your greatest fear?

FB: Of being taken for toast.

TSP: It's been said, you are - what used to be called - “middle brow”...

FB: Oh, I know, I know! Another one is “half-baked”, then there's “the sugar-loafer” and “dough-boy” These are all mere clichés, of course.

TSP: Really?

FB: Devoid of all meaning. The truth is even plainer: I am as mealy-mouthed as any self-respecting lump of carbohydrate.

Fried Bread is a member of Equity

TSP: How do you envisage your end?

FB: As crotons sprinkled over French onion soup? Lapped up by someone equally scrumptious as myself - a Carla Bruni, for example, or a Justin Bieber?

TSP: That's not very patriotic of you!

FB: Well, it's one better than some snot-nosed Brummie kid sopping up his bacon fat with me!

TSP: There's talk of awarding you heritage status... are you rye or wry?

FB: Very funny words indeed, coming from your mouth!

TSP: At least I have a mouth!

FB: More like a foot and mouth!

TSP: Do us a poem, then!

FB: If you insist! This one's called “crumbs in the bed”

crumbs in the bed

a breakfast of tupenny

rhyming poetry is dead

good of you to photocopy

a cup of tea instead

of jumping right on top of me 

TSP: God, that was shite!

FB: I know. Dismal what you can get away with these days, dontchya think?

Tra-Laa!

New Year Honours Sir Ronald Biggs

The Sock Puppet: Sir Ronald Biggs, our readers would love to know how you felt when the old Queen fingered you for the old knighthood.

Sir Ronald Biggs: In a word, gutted.

TSP: Could you explain that for our readers?

Gary Oldman after plastic surgery
"Biggsie" 1998

SRB: It's been alleged that as Her Royal Majesty was drawing the actual sword, I allegedly flinched or even ducked. In point of fact, the whole investiture was done in absentia, since I was neither there in person at the time, nor anywhere else in the vicinity. Also, not only do I stand a hundred per cent innocent in my stockinged feet; but I have concealed on my person sworn affidavits by concealed witnesses who saw the state I was in on the occasion. Suffering from a case of third degree diarrhoea, I could never have gone down on my knees for fear of loosening the bowels and soiling Her Royal Apartments - a form of disrespect which has never formed part of my intentions in any respect.

TSP: So what exactly are your intentions?

SRB: Wholly honourable, your honourable worships. For me to walk, assisted mind you, into any public house on Whitstable High Street; to stand, suitably propped mind you, at the bar; to order, by means of any intermediate third party mind you, a pint of their best bitter; and to drink, through any normal straw mind you, as much or as little of the dear old beer as would satisfy any appointed umpire or other intermediary the Royal Court saw fit. To put it in a nutshell, in fact, to satisfy any Royal Court in the land that I was willing and able to do what is right and proper in a nutshell.

TSP: Would that be The Royal Court of St. James, or the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand?

SRB: As long as it's not the Royal Court in Sloane Square, I wouldn't give a monkey's which Royal Court it was. Degenerate place!

TSP: Are you referring to the Royal Court Theatre?

SRB: Is that what it is?

TSP: In your day, a haunt of the playwright Joe Orton.

SRB: Joe the What's-His-Right? The nefarious defacer of library books?

TSP: The very culprit.

SRB: Then I go back to my opening remarks. By whom, may I ask, would the deliberate defacement of innocent books designed to be read by pensioners, wheel-chair access wallers, unemployed plumpies and such like be condoned, eh? How long did the little turd get?

TSP: Eighteen months hard.

SRB: Sewing poxy mail-bags, I rather think! But don't you see the point of my gist? The dirty rotten toe-rag performs an act of vandalism against the very heart of English decency and skips off with a slap on the wrists? Whereas the likes of us folk heroes and loyal members of the original criminal class getting thirty years for playing minor roles in a straight forward and somewhat romantic train robbery...

TSP: Which, in your case, netted 2.6 million pounds, worth over 40 million in today's money.

SRB: Look here, sunshine, the old GTR was long consigned to the anals before decimalisation ever set in! Whereas, seen from the genuine criminal's point of view, defacing library books is an unnatural act, tantamount to buggering kindly old ladies on their own landings. You know what buggers of kindly old ladies get inside?

TSP: Do tell!

SRB: Only the jolly old tube of Macleans squirted up the old Humphrey Jarvis!

TSP: Great Scott!

SRB: They don't like it up them, see!

TSP: Bu-bum! I should think not.

SRB: Brings them out in a rash.

TSP: Very rash, I'm sure.

SRB: Which only goes to show you how true rough justice is meted out to the deserving.

TSP: So what, in your opinion, would have been a more suitable penalty to pay for your crimes?

SRB: All being fair and square, I think transportation would have suited me down to the ground.

TSP: You're in favour of a return to penal colonies, then?

SRB: I'm not exactly averse to the idea, no. So long as all poisonous snakes and spiders are cleared out of the dormitories, lavs and showers. Plus any locals loitering about ought to be kept well sprinkled, dusted off and rubbed down. On the whole, I think a spot of planting at the old plantations and forcing a bloke to eat his Christmas pud on ye olde beach, for example, is quite enough of a punishment in this old day and age.

TSP: Hang on a minute, your honour, isn't that more-or-less what you got?

SRB: Ah yes, but I paid my own way, didn't I? You can't say I was detained by Her Majesty's jurisprudence when, at each and every juncture, I was picking up the tab from my own share of the ill-gotten, could you? Saved the taxpayers of England a fortune in dental bills alone, I did.

TSP: So where to now, Sir Ronnie? A world cruise? A season in pantomime? What's your choice of Desert Island Discs? Or are you holding out for a peerage?

SRB: I'm not saying I've abandoned all hope of taking my rightful seat in the House of Lords, that is if Her Majesty were to make good her threat of ordering me to a Baronetcy, I would have to think seriously about it, somewhat, before, with the deepest of respect, turning her down. What I'm saying is, the public have come to expect a certain moral content from their villains. As Roopie Murdoch was saying to me only the other day, that blooming lot are all tainted, it's been one dirty scandal after another. Did you know, he himself turned down the throne of Canada on account of all their shenanigans? He said, you might be just as well off steering clear of them, striking out on your own, so to speak,; and who knows what the good lord has got in store for you? I mean, the old Bishops still have their seats in the House. See what the old Pope has to offer? I mean, if a time-served Nazi cleric can get away with it, why not a lad from Lambeth Walk? A little dash of charisma goes a very long way these days.

TSP: Thanks very much for your time.

SRB: Erm, it's cash payment only, Squire! Ha-ha, none of your fake chocolate money! Save all that cheque's-in-the-post waffle for the taxman.

Phil Collins as Buster
("Biggsie", 1998)

After-forward:

Great After-Dinner Yawns No. 0002

by Philip Lee

As soon as I received the order of the boot from Rose Bruford School of Speech & Drama (for Christmas 1977) I dusted myself off, got a job sorted out and somewhere to live. My new workplace was in the basement of the old County Hall building across the river from the Houses of Parliament. The new flat, which I shared with Christopher Lee and Dave “Westy” West, was in the only remaining terrace of old Lambeth Walk.

Being of a romantic bent – a pussy-footying Caretaker, if you would - as having (in my father's immortal words) 'a bit of stuff' in Sidcup - my weekends were a source of comfort & joy. Friday evenings, after clocking off at the old nine-to-five, would see me skiving out the back of County Hall, down the long, dark tunnel under the tracks of Waterloo Station, to emerge at Lower Marsh; whereupon I would buy a decent box of chocolate fondants from a slightly dodgy retailer located on that lively thoroughfare. My one pound (net weight) of dark chokkies under arm, I would scamper down towards The Cut, round the corner into the side entrance of the station; and there, I would buy a nice bunch of roses from a bloke with striking white hair very popular in that locale. Then it was crossing the road, upping the steps to Waterloo East and boarding the first train on the Sidcup line (fast between London Bridge and Hither Green).

Millions of years later, in another life on the further side of yet another planet - as it were - a film came on the box about Buster Edwards, who was a colleague of old Ronnie Biggs from his days robbing mail trains. This smiling geezer had eluded the police entirely at the time of the blagging, gone abroad, then lingered in Mexico with the gallant one (lately escaped) and other members of the consortium. After three years of this, pining for the comforts of wife, kids and the Great British Banger, he flew home and handed himself in. Edwards served nine years of his dues and then, on release, began flogging flowers at Waterloo. He was the Buster, quite unbeknown to me at the time of my enduring assignations in Sidcup, off whom I would buy the red roses.

I read he later handed himself in to the Almighty. That's a shame. I'm sure his flowers brought much joy, and assuaged a fair bit of guilt on all sides.

Me, 1977