IN FLAMIN' JUNE

What a hoot

to be oot

and a boot

in flamin' June.



(Although it's not

my lot

to be a Scot

in flamin' June.)



What a shame

playin'

in the rain

in flamin' June.



You got

a new waistcot

for Ascot

in flamin' June.



As black

as a cat

a natty top hat

in flamin' June.



And Flora

looks adora

in her fedora

in flamin' June.



Hugh

has to queue

for his view

in flamin' June.



Too discreet

with his seat

he sends a tweet

in flamin' June.



The leaves

off the trees

shellin' like peas

in flamin' June.



Tee Hee

what glee to see

the Diamond Jubilee

in flamin' June.



Damp crown jewels

pearls

and high heels

in flamin' June.



No matter

wet crowds chatter

at the regatta

in flamin' June



The Pimms

and the gins

drownin' their sins

in flamin' June.



The hearty

street party

kicks off at twelve thirty

in flamin' June.



Someone makes

cakes

or should we say bakes

in flamin' June.



There's ringing

and singing

and even more wringing

in flamin' June.



Such a shame

rain

down the drain

in flamin' June.



Suppose

everyone knows

it's no to the hose

in flamin' June.



And they all know

the euro

is a no go

in flamin' June.



But with stiff upper lip

and a royal Hip

Hip

in flamin' June.



Great Britain

is smitten

and we do love it rotten

in flamin' June.

ROYAL BARGE

"Bugger this weather," said Philip his gloved hand twitching angrily on the handle of his sword.

"It can't be helped," said his wife as she smiled and waved yet again at what she thought might be another passing vessel.

"If it gets much worse we won't be able to see a bloody thing." Philip wasn't going to be consoled.

"They must have called off the fly past," said Harry with a look of relief on his face. His pink beret was wet through and felt like a soggy cow pat.

"You warm enough love?" William looked at Kate and even the glow from her warm red outfit looked damp.

"I put some thermals on thank goodness," she replied.

"So did I," cut in the Duchess of Cornwall. "Nicked them out of your father-in-law's sock drawer."

The two Duchesses laughed and waved.

"Bloody ridiculous," It was Philip again. "Can't tell if it's a stink pot, a cutter or a bloody dragon boat."

"Why don't you go below Philip?" suggested the Queen.

"Slip downstairs for a Chinky you mean. Looks like a bloody floating Chinese restaurant." The Duke had said as much when he'd first boarded the red velvet and gold floating palace with its two absurd thrones. "Red velvet arm chairs like something out of the back row of the local flea pit," he said to one of his grandsons as they explored the deck.

"They've worked very hard and it's not their fault the weather has turned a little inclement," said the Queen.

"Inclement you call it. Good god woman, if this is inclement then my cock's a kipper."

Prince Charles laughed. "We're not far from Billingsgate fish market father," he added without thinking.

"You know I don't like that sort of talk, " said the Queen looking at her eldest son over her misty spectacles.

The royal party issued another wave and the rain responded cruelly.

"I've been standing here for over ninety bloody minutes, freezing my admiral's pip's off and if this bloody pageant doesn't come to an end soon I'm going to ......"

"Oh do shut up Philip. Stop complaining and wave." The queen was being the boss.

"Wave after bloody wave", said Philip under his cold breath.

"The Princess Royal drew the long straw on this parade. Tucked up in the dry with a stiff drink no doubt," Philip just wasn't giving up.

Another burst of damp music hit the deck.

"I think it's the Royal Philharmonic mummy," said the Prince of Wales.

"Bloody Water Music is all we need," said Philip as he gazed into the swirling mists, a wet drip or two running in time to the music off his peaked cap.

"Lovely," said the Queen.

"If you like that sort of thing", said Philip. "Bloody Handel."

"Well it's better that Elton John", said the Queen.

"We've got that dubious pleasure to look forward to tomorrow night," said the Prince.

"Well let's hope and pray it pisses on his parade", said the Duke unkindly.

"Philip!" said the Queen abruptly. "I must insist!" and she raised another gloved hand and shook it in the direction of the music.

The newspapers had a field day. Of course they did. "Long to rain over us" was the firm favourite until the very last minute when somehow the Duke of Edinburgh slipped as he was moving off the deck. It looked as though her Majesty had almost nudged him out of her way but what ever happened his Royal Highness took a tumble into Old Father Thames and was eventually fished out by the inflatable police launch once it had forced the excited Italian gondola out of the way. It was, so one of the river police men later reported, the first time an admiral of the fleet had set foot inside their dirigible. One red top's searching head line quite simply read , "Royal Barge?" and most of her loyal subjects knew what it meant.

WAITING FOR THE GREEK FLAME

We waited on the pavements edge

Costa coffee opposite and Subway to our rear

and the sunshine played on to the growing numbers

as the trick cyclist whistled his way up and down the street

while his mate, the sweaty guy on his spring loaded stilts, bounced between us

shouting encouragement and gesturing wildly to those that caught his eye.

Ordinary cars that passed looked out of place

uncomfortable at being there stared at by so many sets of eyes,

not the shiny brand new BMW's dressed up in the Olympic colours

but the shabby rusty red Peugeot with "Driven by fairy dust" the message on the back

and the Frome Reclamation truck full of reclaimed tiles

on their way to be reclaimed again.

The unlicensed sellers of the union flags took two pounds for something to wave,

"Just a couple left son," but we knew they had plenty more stock

hidden in their van parked in the free car park behind Argos.

We needed something red white and blue and we shook them at yet another empty bus

(why there are so many empty buses in Frome remains a mystery)

School children filed in up the hill in their bright flack jackets a colourful crocodile

so they too could be seen as bright as any flame

their home made torches in their hands wondering what all the fuss was about.

At long last the wiry, weary promotional girls from Coke and Lloyds

and a phone company that has helped to sponsor the coming games

rev us up into our market town frenzy from the lofty perches of their tailor-made tour buses

with music and dancing and razzamatazz and promises of a brighter tomorrow and things that will go better

and gold for all or those that cross the line first. Shake that pompom Miss, shake that pompom do.

You're a long way from Greece and quite a stretch to London.

The girl behind me wants to "Evacuate London" or so her stencil proclaims

and she talks to the teenage copper on crowd control, shows him her message.

He's one of a team rarely seen in these parts and he just smiles and sends her back to where she has come from.

Pointless trying to piss on this parade Luv, I hope he said under his helmet.

The sun shone into the eyes of those on the opposite side, Somerset squinters,

and the toddler let her balloon slip and it blew across the road to be rescued by another and returned

to the anxious child with everyone happy and united just standing on the side of the road waiting for the Greek flame.

From their high vantage point on top of Barclays Bank a few heads nodded in the sunshine

a real banker's bonus and the girl in the open window above Boots had a good eyeful too.

The police outriders on their motor bikes waved at us as they never have before.

Some of us waved back which seemed strange to be befriending the traffic cop who on another day

would be throwing the book at us for speeding or talking on the mobile phone.

Cameras everywhere and one on a tripod being worked by a girl in a green and white spotty summer frock.

She should have been going to a picnic or off to nearby Babington for lunch not dressed like that for Points West.

And still we waited for the Greek flame.

Would it infect us and turn our decimal coinage back into pounds, shillings and pence?

Could its flicking be carrying a message of despair, a real Greek tragedy waiting to unfold?

Someone had an umbrella with the union flag on it just in case of rain but this was no longer wet April

but sunny mid May and long to reign over us we all hoped. No Greek drama here please.

The ice-cream van doing a roaring trade and the Cornish pasties from Gregg's the Baker

warm but not as hot as the midday sun.

Will they remember this in years to come? Will the children say yes I was there

when the Greek flame came through our market town

on its way from Taunton to Bristol?

Maybe they will and maybe they won't.

They won't remember the beaming white haired man

who held the silver meshed torch aloft and proudly jogged down the hill passed the Crown (up for rent) and on past Card Factory

looking colourful and smug surrounded by the bunting that had escaped and spread like a victorious spider's web above us all.

Who he was matters little. What he stood for matters lots. Will I Am did it the previous day down the road

and the children will probably remember Will for all the wrong reasons. Famous for his moon walk and the Voice

rather than what it all really means.

But It did bring a tear to my eye. Call me sentimental but I thought the whole extravaganza was wonderful.

Even the Postie who right at the end peddled hard to get through the closing throng before the street was clogged

delivering his mail without fuss or applause as he does nearly every day.

Waiting in the Somerset sunshine.

Waiting for the Greek flame.

WATCHING MINNIE CHASING CROWS

The spring time walk through dripping fields

where dandelions roar and shake their glistening cobwebbed manes

and buttercups blaze their yellow streaks

between the sodden green blades,

the teaming, steaming sward.



Black birds hop and flap like competing teams of lazy ballroom dancers

and off she goes after them with little hope

prancing through the meadow, leapfrogging damp tufts

in a headlong dash to catch one unaware,

the preening, scheming bird.



She never does, never comes close, but always runs back to heel

as though she had and gets the nod, the look of approval

and a smile or a laugh out loud that sets her off again

on another wild goose chase to try for murder in the murder,

the bird's collective word.



Watching Minnie chasing crows knowing that she'll never catch one.

What simple fun it is, what a glorious past time

not a moment wasted so I could spend all day, a life long quest

watching Minnie chasing crows,

Nothing more absurd.

FISH & TIPS.

If you can't find a fellow
to share your umbrella
or even remark on your tits
get down to the aquarium
cause the inmates will stare at them
and the dolphin will love them to bits

Love has a purpose
but when you're a porpoise
you have but one simple wish
it's not the high heels
but meals on wheels
and tons of slippery fish.

DULCET TONE

When Dolcie's head hit the pillow, her torso slid on to the bedroom floor and ended up alongside the old tallboy, the one she'd inherited from her uncle. Her violent killer had despatched her and her partner with such ferocity that it would take the very best that Mr Dulcet's cleaning company could come up with to remove all the traces of the dreadful event and make the bedroom once again habitable. Mr Dulcet had become an expert in such things. What he didn't know about the removal of those tricky blood stains from the skirting boards was no bodies business. Well no live bodies business.

Founded in 1942 by Reggie Dulcet senior and fairly quickly given a rather useful business leg up by the Luftwaffe, Mr Dulcet's cleaning company cleaned up in the East End. It's next big break came in December 1951 with the Gillingham bus disaster. The sixties saw a lot of tidying up after the Cray twins and the seventies bought the IRA to London and more work for the third generation of Dulcets. The eighties provided, as history and Companies House would show, rather thin pickings for the specialist business but thanks to frugal management, fastidious Jewish accountants and an unorthodox approach to supplementing the income, Mr Dulcet's cleaning company survived right through to the present day. Given, as they were, the key to the door, temptation to bolster turnover by plundering the goods and chattels of the unfortunate was too much to bare. The light fingered habit first experienced by Reggie Dulcet senior became an ingrained and inevitable sideline shamelessly passed down through the generations. What the several Mr Dulcets lacked in take home pay they more than made up for in take away booty.

Mr Dulcet always liked to quote for the main jobs himself. So he was first on the crime scene when the police, photographers and forensics had done their digging. Dressed in the regulation white body suit with its built in hood and wrap around foot wear, Mr Dulcet entered the house looking rather like those that had just left it, but nothing like any one who had crossed the threshold since Dolcie and her late husband had acquired the place in the nineteen eighties. He left the same premises looking a few sizes bigger and the white protective suit had filled out to protect far more than its wearer.

Dolcie kept a tidy house. She was what some would term a house-proud person. She liked a place for everything and everything in its place. Her dusted collection of musical instruments stood as good testimony to her willingness to be openly judged as a woman of taste. When she said comfortable or vegetable she always prolonged the sound so that every vowel was pronounced as it was written. "Very com-fort-able," she'd declare as though she was speaking in time to a metronome. Her precision and attention to detail were just two facets that made her an accomplished music teacher. Music however was not the only food of love as far as Dolcie was concerned. Since her husband's passing and after a respectable interlude, she discovered that she needed the involvement of a good man or indeed two. Thus it was that unwittingly she stumbled into the path of her murderer. Jealousy, it seems, was a dangerous and unwelcome bed fellow and one that sadly lost Dolcie her organised head.

"I'm sure that mother kept it there," said Megan when it was her turn to enter and inspect the cleaned property. Mr Dulcet couldn't throw any light on the missing possession and didn't say a word as he showed the daughter his handiwork. Megan couldn't see anything different in her late mother's tidy home which of course was why Mr Dulcet's cleaning company had the reputation it did. From a slaughter house to an ordered house, that was Mr Dulcet's unwritten slogan.

But there was no doubt about it. Dolcie's violin wasn't there. More to the point it wasn't anywhere in the house and so was reported as missing, presumably stolen by the perpetrator of her murder. When in the process of their investigations the police eventually charged a local man with the double killing it became clear that he only had one thing on his deranged mind. He wanted Dolcie and her partner dead because, as the arresting officer put it, the detained suspect was involved in a complicated and intimate relationship that involved both of the victims of the crime. The local hack would have put it more colourfully had his editor let him loose on the front page. "Music teacher plays love triangle."

The case of the missing violin or more correctly the missing violin and its case was puzzling. Megan knew that her mother had thought quite highly of the old stringed instrument. She had called it her "you-hou-dee" after Yehudi Menuhin and no one was quite sure where it had come from other than from the same uncle next to whose tallboy Dolcie's torso had finally come to rest.

In stuffing the instrument down the front of his white all-in-ones Mr Dulcet emerged from the home looking even more like the Michelin Man than when he had entered the building. He grabbed the case on his way out almost like a busy mum at a check out snatching a bar of chocolate just because it was there. There was something else too that made him go for the neat black leather case. He thought he recognised it, was almost positive that he'd seen it somewhere before. The faded rose emblem embossed onto the surface seem very familiar. So he scooped up the prize almost with a feeling that if it didn't, it certainly should belong to him. Once safely in the van he extracted the case from out of his uniform and threw it in the back along with the tools of his trade and the paraphernalia of the professional forensic cleaner.

"Should be worth fifty quid," he thought when he finally opened the case in the safety of his own home and pulled out the handsome fiddle. He added it to the small pile of assorted loot he had acquired nearly every day that week. Little and often was what his father had told him. "A good man puts a little into kitty each day." That's what he had learnt from his grandfather. Not one to upset the family code of practice Mr Dulcet did as he was told. An old violin with cat gut strings would, Mr Dulcet smiled to himself, be most apt in satisfying kitty that particular day. And then he glanced at the photographs he had displayed in their assorted frames. His family looked out at him from the past. His father and mother with him on his father's knee. His proud grandfather surrounded by a rag tag gaggle of smiling children. He was wearing his flat cap and standing next to the horse and cart and in his hand a violin case. Mr Dulcet picked up the old photo frame and peered into its image.There it was.The same instrument case he had brought home. The rose emblem just visible in the black and white image. What an extraordinary coincidence he thought. By pure chance he'd stumbled upon something that his grandfather had owned or perhaps borrowed back in the forties. He took another look at the case and decided that he'd hang on to this particular prize. If it was once in the family then it should become an heirloom. He'd keep it.

Nearly every Saturday he took his week's collection along to his usual and willing contact and exchanged the stolen goods for cash. That particular week the contact was asked to pick up the goods because Mr Dulcet was otherwise engaged. Had he been at home when the contact called, Mr Dulcet would probably have hung on to his violin. But he wasn't and because it looked like part of the week's haul stacked up with the other bits and pieces, it was included at £45 as a part of the £649 tax free payment left in the envelope in folding with no questions asked. Actually Mr Dulcet wasn't that bothered. It would have been nice to keep something his grandfather had once had but never mind. Mr Dulcet went to bed and slept.

It was the same local news paper (it also made the nationals) that had reported on Dolcie's murder and the arrest of her killer that broke the news about the Stradivarius. There was little doubt about it and the insurance company confirmed as much, namely that Dolcie had indeed been the owner of a rare instrument. Much was made in the tabloids about the sale at the Tarisio Auctions of the Lady Blunt, a 1721 exquisite example of the master's craftsmanship which made $15.9 million to an anonymous bidder in 2011. The Nippon Foundation had sold the instrument to raise funds to help the Japanese tsunami appeal.

"Fuck-me-gently!" said Mr Dulcet which was quite a thing for a man who rarely swore. He was beside himself. Forty-five quid for something worth millions. How could he have been so dumb? He hurried off to find his contact and to retrieve his instrument. He felt sick. He felt angry. He felt confused.

The damp open air market in the East End was no place to create a scene. Mr Dulcet was determined that he wouldn't accost his contact in an aggressive way but so pumped up was he with anxious emotion that he leapt at the poor fellow and dragged him to the ground by his faded lapels.

"Where is it? Where is it?" was all Mr Dulcet kept saying to the terrified contact across whose chest the trembling Mr Dulcet sat like someone trying to cling on to a mechanical bucking bull. Obviously the prone contact didn't have the faintest idea of what his assailant was talking about. But Mr Dulcet was persistent. "Where is it? Where's the violin?" The garbled answer hit him like a tsunami.

"Who the fuck bought it?"

From the description he eventually got, Mr Dulcet realised that the purchaser of the priceless instrument was Megan, Dolcie's daughter. It all made perfect sense. She had obviously been trawling the markets and such like for her mother's stolen violin and had struck lucky. Mr Dulcet decided to go and see her. He took with him the photograph of his grandfather holding the violin case.

"Yes Mr Dulcet", said Megan. "I was very lucky. Found it as I thought I might at that big market, you know, in the East End. Got it back for sixty pounds."

Mr Dulcet's mouth was as dry as it had ever been. He perhaps shouldn't have offered Megan a hundred pounds for the violin. Mr Dulcet had shown Megan the faded photo and she had studied the picture with a broad grim. She pointed to one of the children in the picture, a little girl with pig tails and long white socks up to her bare knees and below her tatty drab dress. Apparently her name was Dolcie.

"How much?" said Mr Dulcet as if he didn't know.

"You know it's a Stradivarius and probably worth at least five million pounds . If not more." Megan let the words trip casually, cruelly. "You Dulcets," she went on. "You might be good at cleaning up but you're not very bright when it comes to priceless violins. Fancy loosing the thing twice. I don't know." And she laughed as she shut the door on the crest fallen man.

Mr Dulcet sat down heavily on the door step and felt his feelings welling up from inside. With his head in his hands he started to nod from side to side and very quietly at first a wail could be discerned and increasingly pumped by his leaden lungs, the sound grew into something primeval, the sound of despair, an alarm, a lament, a cry for help, a summons, a warning, a siren.

Nothing like a dulcet tone thought Megan as she put the kettle on.

A COUPLE OF POINTS IN HER FAVOUR

Twinkle twinkle clever bra
how we marvel from a far
up above this guy so blue
like big diamonds shinning through
twinkle twinkle clever bra
how we wonder what you are