The Sensible One

'Picture the scene: The early sixties. It is late summer, after midnight
and a group of us sit around a fire on a beach drinking wine and cider,
somebody strumming a guitar, when suddenly a girl strips and runs naked
into the sea. Everybody follows suit and, not wanting to be last in, I unbutton
my jeans. Then pause, somebody had better stay behind and keep an eye
on the clothes, common sense. Listening to the screams and laughter, I throw another piece of driftwood on the fire and take a long untroubled swig of scrumpy.'
- from ‘Said and Done' by Roger McGough.


It must have been round about
4.30 when, after over 5 long hours in the pub,
(I’d consumed several bottles
of tonic water)
one of our party
suggested it would be a good
‘Cool’ ‘Fantastic’ ‘Yesh, brilliant’
‘Count me in’ idea
to go for a spin
in one of those chairs
that twirl through the air
high above the densely populated streets,
but I,
like a dad watching his kids at the fair,
like a wallflower at a wedding,
like two left feet at the village dance
being held on a Saturday night in the early sixties
in the dilapidated Village Hall,
offer to look after the bags and coats
and the uneaten picnic I insisted we bring
and look on in awe,
and with some trepidation,
as the rest of the gang
charge off
to dip their toes
in the sky.