This is a little poem about those times when you think of the time when your children will be grown, still friends, but differently. Written after we walked around the woods where we built a den and saw that it was now gone.

you don’t need a storyteller now

your bedtime is autonomous

but still one snuggly hug

for safety from the sandman

is today the day

is this our final den?

we dragged the sticks

rolled the logs

made jokes of passing walkers

and their odd shaped dogs

you found our latest furniture

a worn and mossy tyre

I suddenly shouted out

“mind the barbed wire’

You nodded.

And Retreated.

Damp bummed we sat

and viewed our architectural feat

I phone filmed your pride

for the archives of things done

in the woodland adventures of the father and the son

some days, walking hand in hand

I secretly mourn for the days not yet gone

the days that seem like Shepard sketches in an AA Milne

when every beach is a post war postcard

the blue too blue in my recall

your freedom is necessity

but not yet

just wait a little bit

let’s pond dip for skaters with a net

build another sofa train

a kick around

a search for that errant lego piece

eventually found in foot.

Let’s read Peanuts at dusk

let’s dig and splash and play and mime laser deaths in outer space…

and then I’ll let you go

and kick the twigs alone

but let’s have one more day… just one more day

I am off to Aldershot, London and Glasgow, and then take my new shows to Edinburgh fringe and on to Liverpool, Bath, Bristol, Newcastle…