‘Half a thought for Hamish’ has been included in the autumn edition of London Grip. It was initially submitted (unsuccessfully) for the summer edition but I’m grateful to editor Michael Bartholomew-Biggs for suggesting a resubmission in June for this month’s magazine. I didn’t change anything, so I imagine it must have been deemed to fit better with this month’s poems (introduced below). The poem was written with a very specific setting in mind, which is the Windsor side of Eton bridge.
N.b. There currently seems to be a problem with the link below – poem posted here in the meantime
Update: All London Grip data from Autumn 2023 to Autumn 2025 is currently lost
LONDON GRIP DATA LOSS: RESCUE PLAN – londongrip.co.uk
Half a Thought for Hamish
Spare half a thought for Hamish McGinty,
his boots spattered by river mud,
geese and sea birds peppering his temporary table
under the sky’s off-white Sunday.
Spare half a thought for Hamish,
his grey and white head
smiling without direction.
Spare half a thought,
he thinks, if you can,
but for what?
Spare half a thought for Hamish McGinty:
those river walks he’ll never vlog.
This is the man without subscribers.
Spare half a thought for Hamish,
caught between Mephistopheles
and the raging salt chuck rails
of The White Stuff; half local,
half tourist – both parts mystified.
Spare half a thought when the dawn means nothing,
when you’re clambering around sealed boxes
from the past on the lorry of the mind and heart.
Spare half a thought for Hamish McGinty.
He restrains himself from talking:
would do so if you asked him.
The mind isn’t ‘out there’ for him yet
on communal pavements – you wouldn’t mentally file him
as another babbling shipwreck.
Spare half a thought for Hamish
when he has no satellite pre-sets
or passengers for the road ahead.
Spare half a thought
as he gets up from the table
and over the bridge past Wren’s hotel,
an ancient church and the reliable indefinable
grey and violet of the river.
Spare half a thought for Hamish.
No-one can search his catalogue of the present
from a distance and click some heart. Spare a thought.
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Wilderspool Causeway 
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