PRAISE POEM FOR YORKSHIRE PUDDINGS
Light brown moon in a gravy sky
Round O of delight on a big white plate
Floppy as a vest if you get ‘em out early;
Hard as a wall if you get ‘em out late!
Alchemy of eggs and milk and flour
Aesthetically gorgeous in a kitchenful of steam
Cultural symbol with enduring power;
Perfect as a sunset, elusive as a dream.
All in the wrist to get the air in the batter
As the shattered eggshells lie crushed like martyrs
As they wait to grace your Sunday platter:
The Yorkshire Pudding is the Queen of Starters!
My blood is racing and my heart is thudding
At the thought of this dinnertime’s Yorkshire Pudding!
© Ian McMillan 8.1.09 for Five Live and The
Gabby Logan Show
TWO NIL
Oh the day’s not nice and the day’s not pretty
It’s the day after Barnsley lost to Bristol City!
You might feel indifference, you might feel pity
Cos Barnsley let in two at Bristol City
But I feel a pain right in me nitty-gritty
And me heart’s in a tangle like a bowl of spaghetti
You might dismiss it but I just can’t forgetti
That Barnsley lost to Bristol City
I’ve got dreams: I’m a kind of Walter Mitty
And I dreamed that we might beat Bristol City
And I’d celebrate by playing my new Scritti Politti
Album while I ate a plate of cannelloni
But we lost two nil to Bristol City
And I have to admit I’m feeling pretty....unhappy.
© Ian McMillan 8.1.09 for Five Live and The
Gabby Logan Show
THE BARD OF THE BUTTON TIN
Our house was always full of Burns;
We had his picture on a shortbread tin
That became my mother’s button tin.
It’s strange the way a poet learns:
I asked my dad about the solemn bloke
On the button tin; my dad explained
About the bard, and he explained
How the poet’s words came from the folk
He listened to, their songs, their rhymes,
Their stories in the Ayrshire air;
Dad’s story hung in Yorkshire air
And then, as he did many times
My Dad recited ‘To a mouse....’
In his dancing Scottish voice
And a poet’s long-dead voice
Reverberated round our house
And the stern chap on the button tin
Could not suppress a Bardic grin.
© Ian McMillan 8.1.09 for The Times and
Rabbie's 250th Birthday
BARNSLEY v CHELSEA, FA CUP Quarter Final, 8 Mar'08
HARRY TUFNELL’S GHOST
I saw a spectral figure sitting in the stand
He noticed I was looking and he raised a bony hand
He said ‘Now don’t be nervous lad about tomorrow’s game;
I helped to win the cup that once, and I’ll help the team again;
A goal in the last minute that I’ll push in off the post’
And I realised I was talking to Harry Tufnell’s ghost.
Harry Tufnell, what a man, the chap who scored the goal
That won the cup in 1912 had risen from his hole
To haunt the pitch at Oakwell and give the team some hope
Of beating mighty Chelsea: if they’re the shower, we’re the soap
That they will slip upon and come a southern cropper
Harry smiled and said ‘ I think you’ll beat ‘em good and proper
And then I’ll raise a glass of Barnsley Bitter in a toast!’
And I realised I was talking to Harry Tufnell’s ghost!
Harry Tufnell is a legend and by tomorrow night
We’ll have other legends basking in the light;
Men with names like Howard, Odejayi, Leon, Steele;
Men who know how towns like this one think and breathe and feel;
So get your Wembley tickets booked ‘cos one team wants it most
And yes, we’ll win: you heard it first from Harry Tufnell’s ghost!
© Ian McMillan for Sport on Five Live
CONNECTED
Before, when you got mail,
It was a chap in a cap with a sack packed full;
Before, when you researched
You sat and sweated in a library that was just this side of dull;
And when you booked your holidays
You stood there in a queue
Behind a family of five and a pensioner or two
And life seemed so much slower, somehow;
There was acres of last week and just half a glimpse of now;
Today you click
On a mouse
And you can shop till you drop without leaving the house
And now you send
Your blogs
Right across the globe and the photos of your dogs
Can appear on your site in the twinkling of an eye
And in a tick you get a picture back of Grandma saying Hi!
Framed against the backdrop of a California sky…
And it’s been fifteen years from before to this
And now we’re living in a universe of constant cyber bliss!
And like the first fire in the cave
Or the first turning of The Wheel
The internet is changing how we think and speak and feel
And in the next fifteen years the net will turn and twist again
And go down murky sidestreets far beyond this Barnsley brain
And one thing’s certain: the net is here forever,
Constant as taxes, unpredictable as weather…
And before I’m dragged right under in a growing tide of spam
I’ve time for just this one last post: I click therefore I am!
© Ian McMillan, for BBC R4 Today, 7.8.06
SLOUGH RE-VISITED
Come friendly words and splash on Slough!
Celebrate it, here and now
Describe it with a gasp, a ‘wow!’
Of Sweet Berkshire breath
Slough is open, wide and green
With gorgeous buildings in between;
In the museum can be seen
Slough life, Slough death
Which show the history of a town
That people have tried to put down
By talking of it with a frown
And cruel sneers.
It’s true Slough Town don’t always win
But losing’s shrugged off with a grin;
Slough can take it on the chin
And has, for years.
Some towns are just seen as a joke
Through a fog of prejudicial smoke
Well, let’s shut up these put-down folk:
Their opinions smell!
Ask Slough people if they’re glad
To live in Slough, dismissed as bad:
Mum and dad and girl and lad
Are living well!
In 1196 it was known as Slo
and through the years it’s had to grow:
people came here ‘cos they didn’t want to go
To Maidenhead.
On foot, in coaches, trains and cars
To the factories, houses, shops and bars
They came to play or work for Mars
And stayed, and bred.
It’s people, living lives with care
And breathing in the Berkshire air
That make a town think ‘Yes, I’m there!’
And the sneering fails.
So, Children, Husband, partner, wife
Dismiss the poet’s rhyming knife
Slough’s the place to live your life
So hoist Slough’s sails!
© Ian McMillan, for VOLVIC, 19.4.05
as an antidote to John Betjeman’s take on the town
