Fishing in Corolla Bay, The Outer Banks, North Carolina. My first try at fishing! The stripey giant on my line is called a DRUM – apparently! I did put it back when I unhooked it!
Writing
THE SHOOTING SEASON
There’s a lot of controversy about cop- killer Harry Roberts being released soon. Some might remember that he shot dead 3 policemen during a robbery in Shepherds Bush in the 1960’s. Well, I was mistaken for Roberts during that time he was on the run; (he was subsequently discovered hiding out in Epping Forest). I was working in Barnet – quite close to Epping forest- in a pub and one day found myself surrounded by armed police in the public bar. Someone had reported they had seen Harry Roberts in the bar! Of course when they saw me and checked me out they realised it was a mistake. One of them said to me before they left, ‘don’t worry too much but you just saved yourself from being shot’! I needed a stiff drink after that I can tell you!
Oddly enough that wasn’t the end of the matter. In the late 1980’s, when I was living in Leytonstone in East London, I worked with a guy named John Roberts, and in the course of a conversation with him in the pub after work one evening he told me that Harry Roberts was his uncle. It’s a small world.
THE SHOOTING SEASON
“Let the slag have it Harry”, said Jack
“The bullet hit him just below the eye;
He slumped to the ground;
I could hear my heart thumping;
The air was electric”.
Those callous words are B movie speech
Yet the episode is of immense distress
A policeman – one of three-
Gunned down in broad daylight
On a street near Wormwood Scrubs
On August the twelfth
The glorious twelfth
The first day of the shooting season.
LACKENDARA
LACKENDARA
Ah Lackendara
You heard the voices too
At Paschendaele where you
Cowered as the big guns
Bombarded your world to silence
Blasted your thoughts to kingdom come
And left you forlorn
On that ragged outcrop
In the foothills of the Comeraghs
The fox and the curlew your only companions
The gurgling Mahon Falls
All there was to quench your thirst.
For thirty years you trod those hills
Taking little notice
Of ordinary life around you going on
Your presence on the mountain a constant reminder
Of mans’ inhumanity to man.
NO THANKS
NO THANKS
If I left you now, what would you miss?
Grumpy mornings, silent evenings
And taken-for-granted pause between the emptiness;
And hidden behind the tall tales, adultery;
Mental maybe, but real nevertheless
You dazed me in the park one Sunday’s summer afternoon.
Your smile was electric.
Later, you hid your patience well
When freedom was dragged from under my feet.
You ticked of the (waiting) time
And I repaid you with monologues of deceit
There are those more deserving of your kindness;
Less selfish, less angry,
And less possessed of my bloody-mindedness.
You bore your cross to the edge and beyond.
Always hauling me back to the fold.
Snatches of love were your only compensation,
Were I a better man I would cloak you in gold
ZOO TIME AND CHANGING TIMES
Some writers should be avoided like a swarm of mosquitos. I am thinking of the likes of Martin Amis/Will Self/Salman Rushdie etc. I would probably have put Howard Jacobson in that category until I read my first book of his – ZOO TIME – recently. Brilliantly funny, waspish, and with prose so sharp you could cut yourself. Ostensibly it is about writer Guy Ableman and his obsession with his mother-in-law, but really it’s about writers and their obsession with the writing profession. No one reads any more according to Guy; his publsher, fearing the same, has committed suicide, his agent is in hiding, and his wife, Vanessa, is writing her own novel, which together with his unruly passion for his mother-in-law combine to make this the best novel I have read in years. 5*****
CHANGING TIMES
We are murdering time
Now is no good
Maybe what happens next will be better
Life is someplace else
Perhaps on our poncey phones;
It’s like eating in a restaurant
And discussing the menu
From somewhere else;
Everyone is on edge
Like we are slipping a cog
Or like musical chairs
When the music stops
You change your life
Doesn’t matter if you get it wrong
It’ll be shit whatever you choose
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
Despite her aversion to anything red
Marnie still wore scarlet lipstick in bed
A warning to writers
That plot holes are dangerous.
Blog holes are dangerous too;
You can easily fall through
The gaps in the information highway.
But pot holes are the most dangerous
Of these blighters
and must be avoided at all cost
By day-dreaming writers.
ODE TO A SHOPPING TROLLY
ODE TO A SHOPPING TROLLEY
Oh beautiful chromed perambulator
You of the sleek wheels
And wayward inclinations
Carrier of booze and babies
And, occasionally, goods and chattels,
You were a lovely mover once
Look at you now;
Silt to your midriff
Capsized for eternity
Gathering flotsam and jetsam
For a stinking old stream;
Fit for nothing but stopping gaps
ALL MY BOOKS
MY BOOKS PAGE ON FACEBOOK;
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/My-books/822507557782345
ALL MY BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE ON AMAZON;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent
SEPTEMBER IS THE LOVELIEST MONTH
SEPTEMBER IS THE LOVELIEST MONTH
September is the loveliest month.
The sky is on permanent fire
The trees painted many colours
Burnished, it seems, with pure desire
In the park, ducks glide silently by
And the always busy seagulls
Resemble sea-planes
Coming in to land from on high
Whilst near the dozing oak tree
The squirrels nutmeg each other
Each acorn hoarded
For the soon-to-come cold weather
Your arm in mine
We stroll through the park
Heading towards the sunset
Home before dark.
GOING ROUND THE SUN AGAIN
GOING ROUND THE SUN AGAIN
Going round the sun sixty eight times
Takes some doing
Even if you are merely a passenger.
The first time round was really a blur
No sense at all that we were
Doing almost seventy thousand miles an hour.
Mother said I screeched most of the way
And that the snow piled high
For months every day.
Even the tenth spin
I don’t recall a lot of that
Except that it was the year mother got fat
For a while, anyway
And then she was thin again.
The years stretched to decades
Still round and round we went
Sometimes I travelled in the company of steel bars
And sometimes I journeyed with the stars.
And there were times when writers came to stay
Becket, Behan, Millar, Hemingway
Of course the children came too
But for many years I have tripped with you.
My father got to number sixty nine;
I wonder how many rounds will be mine?
My Writing Life 