See our page from April when Hamish’s statue in the centre of St Andrews was unveiled.

Ode for a Birthday Boy                                                  Thanks to The Beatles

Perce,  you’ve grown older, losing your hair,

Any day from now.

You’ve been always sending me a Valentine,

Birthday Greetings, bottles of wine.

When you got home at quarter to three

I hadn’t locked the door. . .

Yes, you did need me, yes you did feed me

When you were sixty-four.

Now you are older by just a year

Will you be the same?

Will I still be knitting by the fireside?

Sunday evening – take a bus ride?

Digging the garden, cutting the grass

Keeps your mind alive.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me?

Now you’re sixty-five.

SING ALONG  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCss0kZXeyE

Scaffolding       Seamus Heaney

Masons, when they start upon a building,

Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,

Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done

Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So, if, my dear there sometimes seems to be

Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall

Confident that we have built our wall.

for Mike J and Mrs Mike

SONNET 116    William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 The PEST      W Rus Darling       (best to read it aloud)

Oh ye,  wha in your oors o ease,

Are fashed wi golochs, mauks an flees,   bothered with beetles, maggots fleas

Fell stingin wasps an bumble bees,

Tak tent o this:                                        heed

There’s ae sma pest that’s waur nor these

To mar your bliss.

They hing ower hedges, burns an wuds,

An dance at een in dusky cluds;

Wi aw your random skelps an scuds,                        slaps and blows

They’re naeweys worrit:

Gin there’s a hole in aw your duds,

They’ll mak strauchtfor it.

I’ve traivled wast, I’ve traivled east;

I’m weel aquant wi mony a beast;

Wi lions, teegers, bears – at least

I’ve kent their claw:

I’ve been the fell mosquito’s feast –

But this cowes aw.

Auld Scotland, on thy bonnie face,

Whan Mither Nature gied ye grace,

Lown, birken glens an floery braes,                  Sheltered, wooded valleys

Wild windy ridges,

To save ye frae deleerit praise,                        delirious

She gied ye midges.

IN A BATH TEASHOP           John Betjeman

“Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another-

Let us hold hands and look.”

She such a very ordinary little woman;

He such a thumping crook;

But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels

In the teashop’s ingle-nook

Apologies -too sunny for a good photo. There are about seventy places where you can eat in St Andrews. I don’t know if any have an ingle-nook.

Hamish  –  St Andrews Cat About Town

When I was born

A green-eyed ginger kitten,

I was the bold one, the pick of the litter.

But I grew up.  Next life, lord of all

In a house in a mews,  behind a wall.

Soon I was like a cat on a hot tin roof  –

Until I fell off and landed on my feet.

Now I please myself, not shy, ubiquitous,

I go to dinner parties and sleep-overs.

I’ve escaped a catalogue of catastrophes.

I was a cat among the pigeons – and crows –

Rescued with a ladder, by lads.

I’ll let the cat out of the bag;

I’m the cat’s pyjamas.

I have countless Followers on Facebook.   (Needless to say, I do not tweet.)

And now, I’ve a graven image,

Right where I belong

In  the centre of my town.

For a real cat poem see   The Nine Lives of the Cat Mandu     (Jackie Kay)