Top Singles of the 2000s

I'm going to do the same for the 2000s (meaning 2000-2009) as I did for the 1990s. I enjoyed doing it and I think it's quite interesting. Basically, it's a playlist of 100 UK singles, 10 from each year of the decade.

It's not the same as the best songs or, by any means, my favourite songs. The ideas is that it's 10 great singles from each year which combine to tell the story of the pop charts in this decade.

I don't think I could do this as well for any decade apart from the 90s and the 2000s (though I could manage just about for the 80s and probably will at some point). Those are the decades when I had my nose to the ground, my ear to the wall, my finger on the nose. I may even know the 2000s better than the 90s. I certainly bought more music, including singles. I admit that by the end of the decade I was not paying as much attention to the singles chart as I once had, but I still had a pretty good idea where it was at.

There are quite a few things which make the 2000s very different from the 90s, probably the main one being the inclusion of download numbers in chart data from 2007 onwards. Arguably -  for reasons that I can't explain perfectly, though I think I basically understand -  that killed "indie" as a factor in the pop charts for good.

Funnily enough, "indie", or, let's say "guitar music" is a strikingly large chart factor in the years immediately preceding that change. Far more so, in fact, in terms of proportion of Top 10 hits. than in the Britpop era. By this point, that doesn't really mean the music I like. It means Kasabian, Fall Out Boy, and things like that.

Unlike in the 90s, my central taste was not really for the chart music in this decade. I am a grown-up music fan who buys lots of music and goes to lots of gigs. I'm still into popular indie somewhat but more into album-focused Americana. I'm. conversely, much less anti-poppy pop music than in the second half of the previous decade. This is especially true in retrospect. I really love a lot of the massive pop hits of this decade, from both sides of the Atlantic. But, still, not as much, deep down, as I love, you know, Wilco, Josh Rouse, Rilo Kiley, The Pernice Brothers, Bonnie Prince Billy, that kind of stuff ...

So, there's a certain trap I could fall into (and will, to some extent) with this decade. Songs like All My Friends. My Girls, Such Great Heights, seem massive if you're a vaguely music press-following 2000s music fan. And they are dance music, they are pop music. But, no, they weren't UK hit singles. I don't think that kind of "massive pop song that wasn't a hit single" existed in quite the same force in the 1990s ...It's something slightly different ... I won't ignore that stuff, but I'll be a bit cautious of it.

It's noticeable, going through the list of Top 10 hits in the first half of the decade, that the pop/hiphop/rnb bangers are unrelenting. Like it or love it, it was an incredible time for for pop music. Hot streaks for stars and behind-the-scenes figures who are seen as the tastemakers of the century - Max Martin, Timbaland, Missy Elliot, Richard X, Kanye West, Xenomania etc The biggest pop stars of the century emerging or coming into their own - Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Adele, Rihanna. Katy Perry.

No wonder it's the indie that people look at askance. The landfill indie, they say - a term which now covers a wide range of styles and qualities. 

Coldplay, The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys were all phenomena (people forget how widely Franz Ferdinand were talked about for a while). There was Keane, Kaiser Chiefs, Killers, Kasabian and Kooks. All huge, as were Snow Patrol, Travis and Elbow - smarter, initially edgier, bands than Coldplay who sold out and smoothed their edges a little. Oasis were still banging out mediocre Number 1s. There were multiple Top 10 hits for Morrissey and Paul Weller. There were Wombats and Pigeon Detectives and Zutons, not to mention Babyshambles (who had a remarkable number of hits) and Dirty Pretty Things. There were also really good bands like Maximo Park. At one point I was convinced an Irish band called Hal would take over the world. 

The point is, all of them had Top 10, 20 or 40 hits, and none of them, or their equivalent, would these days, and that's a shame.

What else? One track per artist, as with the 90s list, though that is a bit harder here because of all the guest slots so I'll be a bit flexible. Also, I said with the 90s list that I loved every song I included, either at the time or now, but I don't think that can be true with this list. Still, I have taken Mr Brightside out at the last moment. And I choose The Last of the Melting Snow by The Leisure Society rather than Empire State of Mind, because, well, who cares ...

OK, so I might, unlike with the 90s, add some more notes for some specific songs ...

• Try Again - Aaliyah
• Pure Shores - All Saints
• Yellow - Coldplay
• Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)  - Spiller ft Sophie Ellis Bextor
• Gravel Pit - Wu-Tang Clan
• Barcode Bypass - Mull Historical Society ... aah, good times. This wasn't a hit, though it is their greatest song, but MHS were one of those indie bands that managed some incongruous Top 40 hits.
• It Feels So Good - Sonique
• Actually It's Darkness - Idlewild
• Chase the Sun - Planet Funk
• Winterlight - Clearlake
• Family Affair - Mary J Blige ... one of the best singles ever, by anyone.
• Witness (One Hope) - Roots Manuva
• Shining Light - Ash
• She Fell into My Arms - Ed Harcourt ... I loved and listened to this song more than pretty much any other this decade. It was not successful. No. In fact, I remember reading something to the effect that it had been sent back to the record company by shops more than any other single in 2001. Ed Harcourt did, once of twice, creep in and around the Top 40, but this is a perfect idea of my really losing my ear for a hit. Could have sworn this sounded like a smash hit. No one bought it except me.
• Since I Left You - The Avalanches
• In the End - Linkin Park
• Get Ur Freak On - Missy Elliott
• Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue
• Good Fortune - PJ Harvey
• Hard to Explain - The Strokes
• Do You Realize - Flaming Lips
• Dy Na Mi Tee - Ms Dynamite
• Time for Heroes - The Libertines. This is their best song, right? A great song.
• Lose Yourself - Eminem
• Complicated - Avril Lavigne
• Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
• Dilemma - Nelly and Kelly Rowland
• Dreaming of You - The Coral
• If You're Not the One - Daniel Bedingfield
• Hate to Say I Told You So - The Hives
• Crazy in Love - Beyonce ft Jay-Z
• All the Things She Said - Tatu
• Mundian Te Bach Ke - Panjabi MC
• Leave Right Now - Will Young
• I Believe in a Thing Called Love - The Darkness
• Seven Nation Army - White Stripes
• Hey Ya - OutKast
• The Rat - The Walkmen
• Move Your Feet - Junior Senior
• Danger High Voltage - Electric Six
• Chewing Gum - Annie
• Milkshake - Kelis
• Laura - Scissor Sisters. Not sure if this is the right song for them, but it's probably my favourite, and they were huge, weren't they ...
• Long Time Coming - Delays
• Some Girls - Rachel Stevens
• If There's Any Justice - Lemar. I really love this. This is in my Top 10 of all of these. Lemar should be a superstar.
• You are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve - Johnny Boy
• Irish Blood, English Heart - Morrissey
• I'm a Cuckoo - Belle and Sebastian
• Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
• 1 Thing - Amerie
• I Bet You Lok Good on the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys
• So Here We Are - Bloc Party
• Toxic - Britney Spears
• Hung Up - Madonna
• Hounds of Love - Futureheads
• Feel Good Inc - Gorillaz
• I Predict a Riot - Kaiser Chiefs
• Push the Button - Sugababes
• All Night Disco Party - Brakes
• We Are Your Friends - Justice vs Simian
• Patience - Take That
• Rehab - Amy Winehouse
• Trains to Brazil - The Guillemots
• Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above - CSS
• Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance
• All My Friends - LCD Soundssytem
• Once and Never Again - The Long Blondes
• Running the World - Jarvis Cocker
• Pull Shapes - The Pipettes
• With Every Heartbeat - Robyn
• Your Love Alone is Not Enough - Manic Street Preachers
• Umbrella - Rihanna ft Jay-Z
• She's Got You High - Mumm-Ra
• No Pussy Blues - Grinderman
• 1234 - Feist
• Stronger - Kanye West. 
• Standing in the Way of Control - Gossip
• Grace Kelly - Mika
• Bleeding Love - Leona Lewis
• Les Artistes - Santigold
• Hometown Glory - Adele
• So What - Pink
• Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend
• The Promise - Girls Aloud. Biology is better, but I think was a little harder to fit in.
• One Day Like This - Elbow
• Paper Planes - MIA
• American Boy - Estelle ft Kanye West
• Time to Pretend - MGMT
• Waving Flags - Sea Power
• Zorbing - Stornoway
• Bad Romance - Lady Gaga
• Dog Days are Over - Florence and the Machine
• My Girls - Animal Collective
• Love Story - Taylor Swift
• Love You Better - The Maccabees
• In for the Kill - La Roux
• Red - Daniel Merriweather. I have a weird affection for this song and certain others like it.
• Evacuate the Dancefloor - Cascada
• The Last of the Melting Snow - The Leisure Society

The most stacked years were 2003 and 2007, I think.

Oscars

I have watched every film nominated for Best Picture. Thank you, thank you, I accept the plaudits.

People are saying it's a great year, which it may be. I don't think any of the ten nominated films are bad or undeserving. Equally, the way it's going, I feel like I might disagree with pretty much every major award at the Oscars (apart from Davine-Joy Randolph, who will win and should win). Though I may not.

Here is a ranking. It is not exactly least favourite to favourite, but some charting of least enjoyed vs a combination of my own highest expectations and the extent to which it has been justly or unjustly venerated or pilloried ... it will include the 10 Best Picture nominated films and the five others I've seen which were around and about being nominated for things ...

Past Lives. Theoretically right up my street, but I felt no strong emotions when watching it. Not a patch on some of the films it was favourably compared to, for me.

Napoleon. Kind of fun, but probably a fair bit sillier than everything else here.

Rustin. Enjoyed this very much, and the central performance is great, but it is a little formulaic.

Oppenheimer. I thought Oppenheimer was great, but it's going to win everything, right? So I place it here. I think it has more obvious flaws than most of the other films. Lots of Brits and Americans doing weird European accents. The first half-hour's dialogue bring a real whistlestop tour of mild clunkiness. The last hour being about something that it is really determined you find as interesting as the second hour, even if it's not. But it has more than enough that is great to overcome that. Though if Downey wins and it wins Best Picture, and Cillian doesn't, that'll be a madness. He makes the film great. 

Barbie. Fun, clever, but felt a bit discombobulated by it, really.

Nyad. The best acting performance I saw was Annette Bening in this. She should win Best Actress. The film is good. The story is a bit dodgy, apparently, which is probably why the film is not up for more.

The rest of them were all excellent, really ...

All of Us Strangers. As with Past Lives, I was less moved while watching than i thought i'd be, but then certain elements of it really started to hit home later. 

Poor Things. Just a load of fun people fucking about and having the time of their lives on a superbly designed film. A hoot. Here, the phony accents are the making of the film, unlike with Oppenheimer.

May December. Some major skills and dark humour in this.

Anatomy of a Fall

The Holdovers. If anything, I thought I would love this a tiny, tiny, tiny bit more. Maybe I was expecting a fairytale or gut-wrenching ending. The ending is right for the film, but it's quite low key.

American Fiction. Loved this. Strikes me that Jeffrey Wright and Paul Giamatti are pretty similar in status. Just absolutely guarantees of quality, mainly support acts, but can be great leads whenever the part is right. If either of them takes Best Actor from Murphy, think i'd slightly prefer it was Wright.

Killers of the Flower Moon. De Niro should win Best Supporting Actor. Like, obviously. Why is the fact someone who was once considered the Greatest Film Actor of All Time has given his best, most thrilling, commanding, memorable performance for 30 years not more of a thing compared to the fact that, wow, Robert Downey Jr has done making billions of dollars in technicolor and also can act ok  in black and white ... who knew ... anyway, i think this film has a lot that is great about it, and little that isn't ... and they do treat Scorsese like shit at the Oscars, they really do.

The Zone of Interest

Maestro. I'm making Maestro my Number 1, because I was genuinely moved by it, it'll win nothing, and loads of people seem to hate it and be going all in on Bradley Cooper being a charlatan and a dick, whereas in fact he's directed excellently and acted excellently.

Poem (22): Swans

 

Swans

It’s such a filthy river where

the shopping trolleys dive then die in vain,

a seasonless reminder that

the bed’s been shat, the ooze attacks

the nose, the lack attacks the eyeballs

where I used to push you to the

outlet centre and you’d hoot - in the

dark pissy pass between the bins that overflow

with small town deeds undone

beneath the railway - you still do, to wit, to woo,

and I’m still required

with stern and stifled laugh

to steer you off the lightning cycle path -

 

you name the pylon by the depot

the Eiffel tower … why not, this slimy

Seine is all we’ve got.

 

Between the needles and the beer cans,

you saw, last Saturday, a single family of swans,

two parents and three chicks, hard to spot

below the zealot banks of nettles

and complacent weeds, you made me stop

and we discussed their history, whether perhaps

they were the poorer cousins of some

Canterbury congregation or perhaps republicans in exile,

distrusted of Tunbridge Wells.

 

It’s not swan country round here, I said,

it’s duckling country,

it’s an ugly duckling country.

Poem (21): I had a dream that I was not free

 I had a dream that I was not free

The helicopter I can see through wintered windows

buzzes like a bat above allotments

spending their changeless days spying on

the notoriously-near suburban twin tube stations,

which I’d join with icy tape in the dark blue shock of morning.

 

Every night, modern with disaster, the pride of the skies

clucks sudden and inevitable on its singular target

– which is me, curious and naïve - at a precise forty-five degree.

Move, boy, move, to the back room where you’ll be safe

with the black cat purring like a machine with no cogs.

 

Here it comes the smoking agent of bright night, all

features framed in childlike wonder, blinking over the newsagent

and the furniture showroom, pausing in kinship

with the crumbling cinema, bursting the bravest alien from

the sepia screen and spiralling to fill the frame of middle age,

 

clicked and cut like newsreel over the chimney

of Sydney and Sally playing their morning saxophones

viciously like a jazz lullaby, of Phillip the cameraman

crying his love to sleep, of Dennis the luminous drunk hitting his

pale children in the fragile explosive peace.

 

I had a dream that I was not free.

Poem (20): Pioneer

Pioneer

I flopped before Fosbury,
but stopped cos they threatened me
with infinite infamy.
Now history’s forgotten me.

Poem (19): The hose

 The hose

And after all that, it was me that left the hose

on overnight. I only meant to water that

new honeysuckle, as an afterthought at dusk.

They had to cancel my book tour, of course, for one

mistake that flooded every town. Non grata now.

Destroyer of civilizations, they’re calling me,

just for one small, albeit significant, brain lapse.

The honeysuckle won’t survive this dry summer.

Poem (18): Wrath

 Wrath

You sleep beneath a bivouac with nothing else

but tins of beans and worms of words like carbon, like

dioxide, sank into the bracken, listening for

the woken Kraken on your not-yet-broken back.

 

From somewhere near the cerebellum, ghosts of choirs

of fallen states sing resurrection vigils while

the wind spins mountains round the bend of history, till

your fears of futures unknown sink into the soil.

 

You call across another valley where was lost

a plan for boundaries, where was found a sound to dull

the shock explosion of aeonian progress, locked

and loaded in the flow of freedom and its will.

 

The right side of the loch is lapped in blood red swarms

of agitating midges, darkening flint and tints

of tingling scree – and now, you cannot rest to send

a message of remembrance to the enraged expanse.

One day more, one more day

Some thoughts and feelings about the Netflix 'One Day' series ... 

well, to start with, I'm a long-time sucker for a certain kind of slightly-indie time-jumping romance, from Before Sun... to Normal People to One Day.  Every now and then there's a romance that gets the po-faced indie men involved and proclaiming it's serious art, which helps make it a big deal. Surprised there aren't more of them, really ...

Back in 2009, I used to see women on the tube reading One Day, and eventually must have had some indication that it would be acceptable for me, a manly man, to also read it on the tube, so bought it.

I liked it very much. It pushed various buttons, was neat, funny, and sufficiently well written that, in the end, it made the second most probable plot resolution feel like a thunderbolt of despair from the outer galaxy.

A couple of years later, there was the fascinatingly doomed film. Doomed, at Square One, by casting one of the most famous, talented film stars in the world ... but also by being a film, rather than a TV show, which it should obviously have been instead. The fact of the film being the dampest of squibs rather sedated One Day as a cultural phenomenon. David Nicholls wrote some more good, but not culturally phenomenal, books, there were other zeitgeist romances, the world got a lot worse.

Finally, a decade and a half later, it's a good time to get One Day right. Which they've done. 15 years since the book, 36 years since events of the book begin. Although my own graduation ball in a beautiful courtyard on a perfect summer's night at a Scottish university was 13 years later (almost a whole generation), I remember immediately feeling when starting the book, and this TV series, that this was my world, my age. Edinburgh. The steps, the flats. Tramping up Arthurs Seat. Crappy 90s TV, crappy 90s haircuts. Outer London, inner London, weddings in the country. Are You There Moriarty? Phone calls, letters, compilation tapes.

Maybe the TV series is better than the book. I'm not going to read the book again to confirm or deny. But there are new possibilities, new angles. The leads are both excellent, offering fresh perspectives and contexts for their characters. Leo Woodall, who I've never see before, passes through many just-different-enough variations on pretty-boy 90s haircut, looks almost like various 90s heartthrobs, but surpasses the book's (and especially the film's) main weakness by really making you care about him and understand what Emma sees in Dexter. Dexter's never been a great character before, but here, he somehow is. Ambika Mod is just killer. I wonder if Anne Hathaway will watch it and say to herself "ay oop, i fooked that oop ..."

In the film, Rafe Spall, as the stopgap loser boyfriend Ian, was so much funnier, more endearing, more memorable, than the two leads, you wish the whole film was about him. In the TV series, all the supporting cast are great, but don't get in the way. Jonny Weldon, who I'd only know before from twitter parodies of an out-of-work actor, does a lovely job in that role,

What else makes the TV series better than the book? Well, the music ... some of it is quite obvious, which is fine, some if it (e.g the use of Nick Drake and Karen Dalton) is arguably a little anachronistic, which is forgivable, and, towards the end, it hits notes of specificity I just wasn't expecting, which made me feel, as the modern parlance goes, "seen". The Wild Ones. On and On. Get Me Away from Here I'm Dying. Three tracks from Bewilderbeast at the turn of the century! Up With People! Lilac Wine. And Olympian by Gene, mentioned by name, at the start of the climactic 13th episode, the most "if you know you know" musical moment I've ever ... known.

Even in 2009, One Day was a nostalgic work, but I was unprepared for the piercing algia of the nost this time around. 

No social media, no twitter, no facebook, nothing. There aren't even any e-mails sent in the whole series, I don't think. The introduction of mobiles is a feature of the story, of course, but that helps you cherish the absence of the rest. How much we've lost. There is no mention of the USA in the whole thing. There's a bit of American music, but only great American music. It made me feel so angry at myself. How did I get so consumed by US culture, by the US model of cultural criticism, by always looking west? The film is set in an era when Britain was large enough and Europe was close. God, I know I sound like a reactionary bore. I was as grateful as anyone for text messaging and e-mails saving me from awkward phone calls, But, yeah, we grew up and grew into adults in a very different age, and it's ok to miss it.

Anyway, what was One Day missing? A scene on the East Coast mainline.. Shorley Wall by Ooberman. One scene in Leeds. SFA. Hoopers Hooch. Caffreys. A day where they watch Neighbours and Home and Away twice each. But not much else. 

Poem (17): There's a man in black who's waiting at the gate

 This is another villanelle. I suppose it's about a man.

There's a man in black who's waiting at the gate

The man in black’s still standing at the gate.

You warned us he’d be there and he’s still there.

The demon you compelled us to create

 

was not identified until too late.

So many still can’t walk past the place where

the man in black’s still standing at the gate.

 

A doctrine of god’s love has turned to hate -

there’s not one with forgiveness left to spare

the demon you compelled us to create.

 

Oh, you, you’ve had your reckoning, your fate

is, of itself, agreeable and fair.

The man in black’s still standing at the gate,

 

though, waiting for the ones you’d separate

and celebrate, and order not to share

the demon you compelled us to create.

 

The narrative you’d nervelessly dictate

will never free the ones you did ensnare.

The man in black’s still standing at the gate -

the demon you compelled us to create.

Poem (16): Clearing up the mess, the mess

I'm not sure this is terribly good, but contains a couple of phrases that amuse me.

Clearing up the mess, the mess

I have come to love the gangsters of pitilessness -

with their courteous knives and their speechwriters

you met in a Clapham bar in 2004,

getting the titles and plots of films wrong

looking askance like you owed them a drink -

 

I have come to love the lights out of them

eventually, for what else is there to do -

as they sledgehammer printing presses

in the name of growth and utility,

after all, we were the ones who failed to practise penalty shoot outs -

 

yes, what else is there left on this rebounding earth

but to love their sternly empty lectures & inept grasp of history

since they were on their bike and entrepreneurial

and we were watching late night poker

while eating pistachios in the bath, and they advise us

 

as they recongeal more righteous and new than ever

to wrap ourselves in foil and buy a new kettle

for our rusty oligarch yachts for which we overpaid

because we were lazy fools

who were holding Britain back.

Poem (15): Last night I dreamed in colour

 

Last night I dreamed in colour

At school, they used to show us Pathé films

of the Hindenburg, or Donald Campbell 

in the Bluebird, and I would wonder from

how far away it’s sport to stare at death,

or whether they were testing our response

for nascent signals of psychopathy.

I’m still not sure what I was meant to feel

or whether I’ve evolved to greater depth

of understanding in the face of fire

and flash, of farce and fury as we trip

and totter backwards like stoned kids caught in

a bar fight, mesmerised by shards of glass

like milk-rich babies, seeing black and white,

just black and white with gentle shades of grey.

 

Last night I dreamed of Donald Campbell fast

and brave on Coniston, I saw his face,

I felt his breath, and now, we lift, we lift.

Poem (14): The bicycle

 

 

This was prompted, in a weird way, by Keats' To Autumn ...

The bicycle

Pens down; it’s funeral week. The walkers hew

a clear-sight track, straight through the wheat field, past

the footbridge which the summer stun-girl threw

her bike off, on the shortening squint-bright last

good day of August. Puddles brown the farm

car park where families scan the apple fayre

for ritual, while a distant smoke alarm

unsettles even the most debonair

of silver-haired consultants in retreat –

another apple falls to earth, to eat.

 

The woods don’t breathe for dens half-made, those spring

escapes to in-between world, long before

the purple sky rose like a flood chasing

a holed hulk off a dried-out mudflat’s floor,

to bathe a skate boy’s late girl in her choice

of dead ends. Quick commuters now reflect

they’d heard her pure and unaccepting voice

send echoes through the underpass, unwrecked,

as yet, unspoiled, as yet, by freeze and fall.

They know her naiad face, her siren call.

 

It’s funeral week. Dried flowers rack the rails

beside the road bridge. Trains crawl in, delayed

by on-line strays from loosely tied hay-bales,

the first free gales of winter’s ghost parade.

A nonplussed uncle sniffs the small-town drain

as soon as he steps to the taxi rank.

He stops. The town, the season, his again,

the open summer roads, the gods he’d thank.

The season, the quiet cries of her despair,

the town, the bicycle that went nowhere.

Poem (13): Aquarama

 Aquarama

When halfway through a somersault

in equidistant bliss,

he saw the concrete loom and smirk.

In choosing the abyss

that blinding day in media res,

he bent towards the mean.

Yet shame it was, and so remained,

to linger in between.

Poem (12): The killer whale in North Berwick

 

The killer whale in North Berwick

I remember a killer whale with luxury skin

doing clown tricks

near the pier at North Berwick

 

in 86,

the summer after Maradona,

we were chasing our mother

along the promenade

for cheap fish and chips and we saw

 

an orca in the water of the sea life centre,

the summer of the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games

and the lonely middle distance runners -

we were looping around East Lothian

for the most extravagant ice creams we could find.

 

Remember the ice creams? I asked my sister

last month at her 50th birthday.

The triple marshmallow deluxe oyster shell chocolate covered flake extraordinaire, with sprinkles?

Yes, I remember them, she said.

 

And the gannets on Bass Rock,

Seb Coe and Steve Cram

on the TV? I asked my other sister,

on her 46th birthday, last month.

 

Kind of, if you say so. I do remember the ice creams, she said.

 

And remember the killer whale? I asked my brother,

at his wife’s party last month,

as our creaking bones tried to keep up

with our children playing football.

 

The what? He said. The what? In the sea?

 

No, not in the sea, in a pool near the pier.

A killer whale, with a holiday smile,

doing tricks for the kids on warm and windy summer days,

 

the August after Chernobyl, on

the southern coast of the Firth of Forth,

where we stole golf balls from the rough

and staged cricket matches in corridors

for our mother’s horrified Morningside friends

who’d lent her the seafront flat.

 

There was no killer whale, he said, don’t be silly,

you’re confusing yourself with the kid from Free Willy.

 

There was, there was.

But my sisters agreed with my brother that

there was no killer whale, nor even dolphins.

Maybe seals, definitely gannets, we remember the ice-creams.

 

I asked our mother last month,

as she watched her

children and grandchildren

kicking lumps out of each in slow motion

on a makeshift football pitch,

at the end of the summer of fear and reconvention,

there was a killer whale wasn’t there?

A killer whale in North Berwick,

that transitional summer of 86?

 

Oh yes, she said, of course there was.

He was there for the ice cream, he leapt with contempt,

slid without fear out of the pool and across the pier

saying what happened to your humanity

your prisons cannot contain me

I’m returning to this here North Sea,

believe in me now or I will be

forever gone from your memory.

 

Yes, that’s the one, I said. I thought so.

Poem (11): True beauty

I wish i had an actual picture ...

True beauty

True beauty was

the contents of the tray I spilled

which fell

and smashed upon the marble hall

outside the lift

on the 6th floor

of the 700-room 5-star hotel

I worked room service

in 1996.

 

True beauty as

I disappeared

in shame and shade,

just to return

some three hours later, past midnight,

see the scene was just the same,

the shattered glass,

the scattered chips and chops,

the wine-stained stone –

my masterpiece, my worth.