Hospital visits interspersed with the rip-roaring hokum-pokum mumbo-jumbo that is the latest Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol. I loved it. Several queries about it, my most major the decision to call the baddie's sneaky disguise alter-persona (with which he fools the oldest Masonic Lodge in America, including the 33rd Degree Grand Master, a scholar in esoterica and occult knowledge) Dr. Christopher Abaddon.
Even I, a mere first degree acolyte of Judas Priest, know Abaddon, whilst not a usual surname, is more importantly a demon from the legions of hell. Why did no one in the story spot this?
Enough waffling. On with the Challenge. In response to the plethora of Hometown tracks provided by TFE, I wrote this on a plane. Picture clue to start you off.
Halt
Search not for Romford here, stranger,
it will avail you nuffin’.
You may walk North Street and South Street,
stroll Western Avenue and Eastern Avenue
but each corner you turn
will render thee compassless again:
this town has no cardinal point for you.
What you see is brick mirage in concrete desert;
shake your head and it will shimmer and change.
Why so?
Here be our West End of the East End
it need must spend and grow.
I grew up here, in Homebase,
first skinned a knee in shelf brackets,
and we sat seven to dinner at loading bays.
Billy Smart’s menagerie
bedded down each June in Mothercare;
Oldchurch Hospital crossed the road,
changed its name and whole families now sleep
soundlessly above the old Casualty.
Even the Rom disappears like a morning dream river
depending on where they’re diverting it now.
So stranger, stand stock still and smile
then peel away my breast plate
Essex maids feel no pain.
Rivet your eyes and look. I am Romford,
for all that lived and love here eat this town
and how it becomes us.
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