The world according to Kirkey
Minding my own business should, on the face of it, be a pretty good way of avoiding the chaos of others. If only life was as simple as that. Suffice to say that recently this posture did not prevent me from being immediately sucked into a vortex of havoc, even though it wasn’t of my … Read more
Cutting a solitary figure, standing at the very edge of the now decommissioned dock in Belfast where the then largest movable structure on Earth ever built was launched one-hundred and nine years earlier, and over half a century before I was born, I looked as far out to sea as I possibly could. My isolation, … Read more
A strange malaise came across me before the opening game of the UEFA Euro 2020 Championship (hosted in 2021 because of the global pandemic) had even kicked off. I wasn’t at all interested in the tournament and especially in England. The place of my birth. This is seismic for me since the love of football … Read more
The older I get the more I realise that my late dad was right in his assertion that your school days are the best days of your life. I vividly recall how, at the time, I considered how silly this was, since being a schoolkid was hardcore. I had to do homework, get up early, … Read more
I hadn’t seen Aunty Joyce for what seemed like an eternity. We had never been that close. I only ever saw her at the big-ticket family events – births, weddings, and funerals. I became aware that her health was failing when my mum updated me on a series of phone calls with Uncle Ronnie, informing … Read more
I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed the complete roller-coaster ride whilst bathed in glorious sunshine in Nottingham yesterday. I shouted, until I lost my voice, jumped up and down like a proverbial jack in the box and hid the tears under my shades at the end. Aged 58 I have abandoned any desire to be … Read more
Our thumbs are useful for gripping, allowing fingers to click and acknowledging when things are OK or not so good. I also remember it being used in an elegant metaphor for night shift town centre foot patrol when I was a copper in the then concrete jungle of Bracknell’s pedestrianised shopping centre in the early … Read more
I love where I live but I love to escape it too. I don’t know where my compulsion to flee originates from, but I can recall, aged four, when I lived in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire running to the very edge of the then known universe and touching the Hemlock Stone adjacent to the A6002 and running … Read more
