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For the digital version of this document (.pdf), which has additional images, mainly family snapshots that were not on the original website and do not render well in print:

Viking ship on its way to York, is now just a trickle passing within yards of our house. Any existential connections you wish to make with the transitory nature of our lives and the triviality of the artifacts we leave in our wake (this being one of them)

Table of Contents To the reader Preface Rings Tuffin 1 The Realistic Grevitt Her bench Station Woods Chemo café Hum Garden birds Smart Bliss Counting down The eight fifty-eight to Blackfriars Bluekini blue An English churchyard on Christmas Eve Last Songs Another story Stephanie Bristow The fountain Torpedoes An enamel poppy A prayer for a long-dead gay Catholic Fig soap from Lush A youth hostel zombie thing The library boat pond Encounters with a foot fetishist in a white van while hitchhiking Panettone cat In a hole More Martins Three Swanley Death is not slipping away it is falling off Two swimming pools We’ll hang teddies Here to hear the bluebells ring No lie no angst just tea Lettuce and lit Pus cat Speech for a poisoned rat This sad man (A Dickensian rant for Christmas in Tadcaster)Spot Fantasy about cooking a policeman derived from a French film Fleeting Tuffin 2 (Experiment in form) A mawkish sonnet Four fast poems The vent commutes Waldringfield My first Denise I hit Brian Pat and mic (songs)On a tallow candle found in the loft Sitting on sleepers Don’t let it get away Four under the bed Two sequential poems about my mum and dad in the war Nippy A flight down Carol – Oh radio past blast Grandmother’s sixpence Green doors Gypsy eyes Tooth London summer A mushroom space The tall wood that waits to stir the dream Teddy’s cross Teddy’s trousers Teddy tangled up Dog Teddy spins Teddy and Grasshopper Teddy’s teacher Teddy and the tadpoles Teddy and the two swans Teddy and the lollipop lady Teddy bleaches her cloths Teddy’s email Two steps higher Teddy’s poem Odysseus on the phone on Christmas Eve in the Blitz Teddy’s flat Teddy’s career Teddy and the rainbow Teddy’s soap Teddy’s wallet Lap cats (after Samuel Palmer and Shoreham)The back way Christmas morning Seasonal advice for Snowman from the Christmas Fairy Marge; or, To my phone box Tuffin 3 Lazy bones The creature Antisanta Dreaming in colour It and I are sat outside Number Nine with two friends Teddy and the bridge I-Spy Teddy Teddy at the opera Teddy’s sandals Teddy on the school run Snail Tuffin 4 Marmite and Coke Bluebell Diving Jill’s daddy 13 Big balloon Boating BSIS The Realistic (revised)The boating pond Coppers Flat fish Bus Floor Garden Blind Teddy poems, illustrated by Pat McCarthy Television Tank Tuffin 5 Goat pie Burnt Panettone cat – reprise Tuffin 6 Tuffin 7 Sweeties Suck-a-thumb14 Prelude Blog Post: by Sampson Video:End of video End of blog post Postlude Can you see me?Tuffin 8 Shrewdini The waterwheel Kenneth The stone steps Heck Ek The Lad (in 10 miniature scenes)Tuffin 9 Tin Sticky Whip The Big Gobhole Special A poem in remembrance of Avani’s fall The queue Days tick meow tock quarters The view from Sweeney’s Uncle Doug and the pink pony Tuffin 10 Mogford Two poems for Burns Night Millicent Burns (K)Night!ragù.Nothing lasts forever. Not even in space.I met a man Worried Chris While waiting at Zone 10, I noted, not for the first time.Trevor Type Pool boy Baker boy Mike Pool Flying towards the light Too hot, too hot Stuart stops.I received an unsolicited electric carving knife Today Sandy has had it Ernest lives up to his name Elegy for our red telephone box The anonymous electric carving knife Sit-in Tuffin 11 E(a)rnest The Queen of the Night’s second aria from The Magic Flute by Mozart.A cul-de-sac Flash fiction Fish supper The boating pool Who cares?Dignity Marmite and Coke Bookends Lift on its way Paraffin Feed and Weed Anton Bruckner Halloween Introduction The moon plate My kite dream Down below The trees entreat Beware the rings Electric Tuffin 12 Gerald The skateboard park Pontefract cakes Jesus Tuffin felt poorly Silk How can you fall from a raked stage into a pit onto a battery of drums silently?Grace For Avani while in Bulgaria Sandy Jeff Two gentlemen Obituary: Margareta Knotholt Egg On being unable to attend Lisa’s gig at the Wet Fish Café Floor Wormhole Tuffin 13 Contact