‘Alack’ the little one cries
‘My pink pony, the one with bright blue eyes
has died’

‘Oh brother’ says his mother ‘and I only bought that tuther day.’
‘Oh mother’ says her brother (the little one’s much loved uncle Doug) lend me a tenner and
I’ll get him another.

‘That’s canny’ says Nan (though she confuses gender) ‘If you lend her a tenner – she’ll scarper and buy heroin or a spanner.’

The little one’s no fool, he may be small, but he has balls.
‘Oh Nan don’t be a cow he’s a good man now – not a bit druggy, just a lovely cuddly puppy.’

Nan feels remorse and passes her purse to her son who with one long jump clears the little one the mum and mums mum and flies forth.

Through vale and wood
Cross stream and ford
By byway and highway
Twixt brook and flyway…

to the north parade toy shop but they have not one pink pony with bright blue eyes.
Nor nowt that toyish.
Instead, they offer
A razor with blades, a single skate, a book of tables, an earnest bear and a fake beard.

Doug proffers Nan’s purse for the the lot
…but the git what has the shop will part with nowt but the razor, the beard, and the blades
for nans purse holds but a tiny twist of hash, not a penny in cash.

Doug flies forth the back way.

Twixt brook and flyway
By byway and highway
Cross stream and ford
Through vale and wood…

till proud as he should, after such a journey, before the little one, the little one’s mum and the little one’s Nan he lavishes his hoard aboard the lap of his beloved.

The little bereft one so delights to sport the beard, to shave it clean with the razor and blades just like his uncle Doug does, that the pink pony’s bright blue eyes fill with tears, because you see she was only resting.

I have changed my mind. I had decided to kill off my blog but when it came to doing it – it made me too sad.

The main reason is that were I to just stop posting but leave it up then it would look as if I had died unless I put up a last post explaining the rationale. If I went for that then it would quickly get dated, suspended in time in an unsettling way. There is no way I would remove the whole thing that’s too cruel, after all I have put in quite a bit of effort over the years – so it stays while I think of a way of restoring my enthusiasm – maybe just pictures, podcasts or videos, maybe themed in someway – I really don’t know.

Meanwhile I returned to campus today after 27 months. I tried to keep my mask on, but I kept slipping. My main discoveries were that the journey is long, that talking to people face to face is nice, that I have lost my academic ear (the presentations I attended were completely incomprehensible), that drama students at Hull are smart and engaged in interesting stuff, that I am old and talk too much of the old days, that I am lucky to have this job, that I am anxious that my energy levels will let me down in the autumn, that busking a presentation stops it being boring but means you don’t get to say half the things you wanted to.

I am super knackered and super uninspired but never mind.