This Lake Used to be Frozen: Lamps (2011) It’s Only a Novelty Coronation Street Alarm Clock 155 Tom Jones 155 A Miniature 157 It’s the 4th of July! 157 Sleeper 158 Old Age 159 Norman Stopped Me on the Street 160 Not a Real Bear, But a Bear Nevertheless 160 Walk 162 The Evening of the Day Pavarotti Died 166 Drift 167 Did You Ask for a Decaff off that Other Lady? 169 Yorkshire Pudding Rules 170 A Series of Novels 171 Black Cloud Over My House Sometime in the 1960s 172 The Inevitability of Snow 172 The Idea of Loneliness in the Little Chef, Uttoxeter 174 Platform 2 175 Aubade/Nocturne 175 The Poet Speaks 176 Unrealismus/Realismus 177

Ah’ve Soiled Ma Breeks! (2012)

Come and Sit Over Here with Those Ideas of Yours

Ah’ve Soiled Ma Breeks!

Anchored

A Scientific Explanation of the Mystery of the Passing of Time 184 Tony Bought a Guitar and Got a Parking Fine 185 The Language of Philosophical Enquiry 186 Early Morning Stroll. Deep Woods. Just Seen My Mate Who

Spent His Early Years in a Children’s Home.

Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ Seen in Yorkshire Pudding 187 Ian McMillan’s Unfishnished Poem 188 T’invisible Man O’ Methley 189 Torch Passes By 189 A Black Dog in Four Legs 190 Dream of a Tree in a Spanish Graveyard from a Small House in The South Yorkshire Coalfield

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viii To Fold the Evening Star