I don’t think it can be. Otherwise it probably wouldn’t be poetry.

No I haven’t but I’ve see a lot. Good for haiku.

Snow.

No, I’m done with fiction. I found it exhausting, living with the characters, remembering the plot and sub-plot, hoping it wouldn’t perish while I was away on holiday. It began to feel like a full-time job, and I’d done my best to get rid of one of those. I’m proud of the two novels, but it’s poetry from now on, and whatever prose I write will be non-fiction..

When I was young I thought the north-south dived was a sort of Grand Canyon somewhere below Nottingham, and that if I went south I might fall in! I’m told that the disparity in wealth (usually measured in wages or house prices it seems) is growing. Not surprising, really, when the Government are prepared to bail out the City but not industries elsewhere. But culturally, we all know that Huddersfield is the real seat of power…

It changes every week, according to the shuffle function on the iPod. But I was listening to Lay Lady lay the other day, and fell in love with it all over again. It’s so rich and textured, without that abrasive quality that on other days I admire.

My footballing allegiances are complicated and compromising. I’ve written about it in the past – you’ll have to dig it out.

They wear the crowns.

In the early days I wrote a lot about things I’d seen at work – it might well have been a way of coming to terms with it, or allowing myself a personal response after close of play when what had been required all day was a professional one. I can’t quite believe I used to be a probation officer, and for so long. It seems like another life. But I was young, determined, and I was going to change the world back then, and working in the social sector was as much as a political choice as anything else. But I’m glad I did it. If nothing else, it taught me to respect the alarm clock. I’m familiar with concept of work, and the working day.