2020 – New Year’s Morning – Half past two.

At the turning of the last decade I was sixteen,

My hair fell past my spotty shoulders,

Hipster before it was cool I listened to all my music on cassette,

Much stolen by you from Croydon record library,

Via quite expensive tape recorder,

Onto finest chrome oxide tape.

Three and one quarter of one year later,

My hair much shorter,

I sat by your bedside and sang to you as you died,

A weight of grief and responsibility,

Landed squarely on those still spotty shoulders,

Sending fault lines through my life.

In the intervening seconds between then and now,

I’ve lived and stretched and grown,

I’m now half the age you lived to be,

I’ve married the girl who talked over the Archers,

Got a job (railways you’ll be glad to know),

Though I’ve still not fixed the car.

This last year we bought a house,

Mum thinks you’d like it,

And finally all those nights spent fettling in number 27,

Fitting floors and building shelves,

All planned to the last millimetre,

Bear their fruit in it.

And now I’m two hours into a new decade,

The first of mine unmarked by your dancing,

Yet when ‘Le Freak’ opened the 70s show on the radio,

There you were with me,

Strutting across my mind’s kitchen,

V-neck and jeans and disco moves.

Nobody can say what tomorrow brings,

But I’m glad for every yesterday we had,

Because when I set to on my next big project,

Part of you will be there,

Passing me the next screwdriver,

Marking off the cut list.