Solace

Friday evening. Whiteout.
Snow falls silently,
softly in ghostly murmuration.
A restless earth blanketed,
metamorphosed and miniaturised to a mewling baby,
acquiescing to the serenity of sleep.

Let the sky fall,
the working week is over,
and I hygge at the aphelion
from Monday 9am.
The curse of Adam,
the venue of all my failures,
trapped in the repetition of an Escher,
tiring with the tedium of Sisyphus.

But here, my daughter and I
spin a delicious nonsense of
animals and magic and poo and bum talk
that would make Rabelais smile.
We are safe, and delighted,
we are enchanted, and transported.

And the many tiny tortures
of the working week,
that pursue me in thought –
wild dogs tracking prey to exhaustion –
suddenly fade. Give up the chase.

The universe is singing,
and my soul springs to life on a great dancefloor,
galvanised by the lovely electricity of
my daughter’s lambent laugh.

Getting to know…

…Billy Turnips

Billy ‘Bastard’ Turnips shot to fame in 1976 after winning TV talent contest New Faces as the ‘Pogoing Painter’. Following several years enjoying the trappings of overnight fame, Billy hit the skids and went through a number of reinventions including the ‘Pogoing Window Cleaner’ and the ‘Pogoing Window Breaker’ before finally carving out a niche as the country’s first and only ‘Painted Pogoing Lollypop Man’. He lives in Basingstoke with his 97 year old mother, Tilly Turnips, and his autistic cockapoodle, Monbodison.

Who or what is the greatest love of your life?
Me first wife, Pricilla. She was an amazing women, tits that could stop a train. The Acker Bilk of the pink oboe, they used to call her. Although – and this is between you and me – Acker Bilk was actually better at blowjobs. I should know.

What word or phrase do you overuse?
‘Fancy a bath?’

What is your most treasured possession?
An original draft manuscript of Shakespeare’s The Tempest from 1609. It contains a song, removed from the final version of the play, performed by Caliban which goes ‘We art voyaging to Ibitha, Return’ed to th’island, We are art voyaging to Ibitha, ‘Tis our entent to stage a masquerade’. Of course, almost 400 years later, The Venga Boys picked it up and had a lot of success with it. Dutch arseholes. Which, incidentally, is the medical condition fucking ruining me sleep at the moment.

What is your biggest regret?
Failing medical school because I refused to get off me pogo stick.

Tell us a secret
If I clap 100 times very quickly a quid falls out me arse.