NEW ENQUIRIES DAILY 2025

In order of composition, newest at the top. 

Photographs from Ashurst, New Forest unless indicated otherwise.

Just look at the beauty

of that modulation!

And set aside the matter  

of location.

 

(Urinal, Holborn, London)

       

Is that an abbreviated breakfast

served with abbreviated tea?

Or breakfast with no ‘s’,

implying that there’s coffef but not tea?

(Marylebone, London)

 

The key to life

is a sense of purpose.

Plenty of people struggle,

yet these pigeons have it cracked.

(Southwark, London)

That’s not an option’

she explained, ‘it’s a noption’.

And I realised why the word

had not caught on. 

File this barber

with Fatboy’s Gym, Tortoise Taxis

and the Lose-It-All Casino 

as names you might choose not to give a business.

 

(Chichester)

After the carnival

a confetti of colourful memories

lives on

in every detail of the city.

((Basel:  I arrived just after the 2025 Carnival – a three day binge of drink and masked parades running 4 a.m. on 10 March on to 4 a.m. on 13 March – but despite a speedy clean-up of the major messes, confetti was still visible everywhere)

 

I estimate this croissant

at 150,000 calories.

She looks pretty skinny, though -

maybe she can cope.

(Lucerne: a typical croissant has 300 calories. I reckon this one is x 500)

It may be a trick question

but can you tell the difference between

the modernist coot Fulica atra moderna

and the more traditional Fulica atra classicus?

(Lucerne: the trick being to decide whether the coots on the inlet of Lake Lucerne are more interested in the buildings closest to them, or the more distant ones  we can see in the pictures)

Who could fail to be impressed

that the mannequins of Switzerland

go to the trouble

of sourcing the clothes as photographed?

 

(Lucerne)

Sweetzerland

is useless:

lots of chocolate, lots of watches,

but I can’t find a chocolate watch.

(That said, though I didn’t see one, the choco-watch is a known item - for example, as sold by Beyer Watches & Jewellery, Zurich. I did see adverts for chocolate placing me in 'Sweetzerland')

 

Life is good

as an Easter Rabbit.

Our only concerns are being eaten

and the shadow of the  Big Rabbit, looming above.

 

(Läderach Chocolatier Swiss, Lucerne)

Here’s when it occurs to me

that I am gazing down

on Picasso gazing down

on Fernande gazing down.

(‘Head of a Woman’, 1909, thought to be Fernande Olivier, 1909, in the Rosengart Collection, Lucerne)  

            

I guess they’re wondering

why they bothered to swap umbrellas

given that it’s pretty much

stopped raining.

 (Lucerne)

 

An octet with one member cut off at the legs

may sound problematic,

but – as they all play guitar –

the impact may be hard to hear.

 

(Nicholas Micros: ‘Strummer’, 2009-12, Zurich. According to the artist 'eight identical cement mortar figures play a string less Picasso-esque guitar and make a circular procession on a heavy wheel. It’s the same injection cement used to support tunnels and mines during construction. The circular parade has no beginning or end. The eight-sided wheel is cast in the prized material of high modernist architecture, industrial concrete, and is imprinted with a radiating geometric depiction of infinity')

 

To get frontally pregnant

is understandable -

but to get posteriorly pregnant as well

does seem a little bit careless.

 

(Niki de Saint Phalle: ‘Gwendolyn’ 1966 at the Tinguely Museum, Basel)

 

I see the logic

Smoke is curly,

chimneys ought

to be curly, too.

 

(Basel)  

I'm not one

to gamble

bu it looks fairly safe

to cross the railway here.

(Basel)   

 

Here is my self-portrait

as a finger

covering the camera lens

even as I’m caught by it.

This is no good

I want to see

the painting that she couldn’t paint,

not the one she could.

 

(Tracey Emin: ‘I Wanted You To Fuck Me So Much I Couldn't Paint Anymore’, 2020 – as shown at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, 2025)

          
 

 

This disposal makes a lot of sense

You don't need hands -

let alone gloves -

to climb up steps.

 

(Blackfriars, London)

 

Here's how to count

at least in part.

I wonder how high

the lesson will go.

 

(St James’s, London)

 

To name an establishment

after one chocolate biscuit

could be coincidence –

but to name it after two…

 

(The Playhouse Theatre, near Trafalgar Square, London, has – since 2021 – been advertised as the Kit Kat Club while it is hosting a revival of the musical Cabaret, which features a nightclub of that name. The original Kit Kat Club was a political and literary club for Whigs in 18th century London. That name came from them meeting in on the premises of a pastry chef named Christopher (Kitt) Catling, who supplied meat pies called ‘Kit-Cats’. Rowntree's, of York, originally created the Kit Kat bar in 1935 (Nestlé acquired Rowntree's in 1988). Club was first made in Ireland by Jacob’s – now owned by British firm McVitie's.)

 

 Who’d throw Venus

onto the street –

that now takes on

her fleshy aura?

 

('Venus' mattress, Covent Garden, London)

 

Just how soft

can an execution get?

I can't think too much further

than a hood.

 

(Southwark, London)

 

Probably too obvious

to enter into

any contest for the

best t-shirts slogans. 

 

(Hampstead: I saw the shirt in 'action', but I didn't get a photo)

 

It hardly looks

a big enough road

to cover the 91 miles to Lymington.

Hampstead would be pretty good going.

 

(Camden, London)

 

‘I'm quite a bit bigger than you’

‘Yes, but your nipple is rusty -

and anyway, shouldn’t we aim

to be the same size?

 

(Marble Arch, London)

 

Economics trumps the future

madmen rule what they haven’t turned to rubble,

the moon rises indoors…

All is not well.

 

(Mayfair, London)

 

When the Blue and Red Gap Snake

flips its white tail 

you know it is about to strike.

Yet I am brave!

(Connaught Village, London)

 

I know what I’m meant to think

‘I must get to Brighton’.

I know what I do think:

who is Joe Bonamassa?  

 

(St Pancras Station, London - it turns out he’s an American blues rock guitarist, singer and songwriter)

 

It's as if

the full extent of my training

as an electrician

has been laid bare for all to see…

 

(St John’s Wood, London)

 

I'm surprised they keep going 

So little happens at this station,

you'd think they might be tempted

to sell some news from further afield. 

 

(Stockwell Underground Station, London)

 

If that’s all

that’s left of the car

I think I’ll take a scooter

or the bike.

 

(Swiss Cottage, London)

What is the word

for a gap in the crack?

and is there

an appropriate sealant?

(Marble Arch, London) 

 

I was hoping 

the sign would say

STRICTLY NO RUNNING

as I scooted by…

(Barbican, London)

 

I used to live here 

but I couldn't sleep.

I always said it was time for the world

to slow time down.

(Barbican, London)

 

 

I do not look down on Boots

A perfectly respectable store, I’d say –

and yet I do

look down on Boots.

(City of London – store in basement, visible from street)

 

If the answer

is Saint Gobbaine,

then what was the question

and why was it asked?

 

(Fitzrovia, London)

 

Surely air feels more like nothing

I’ve been to Cheltenham,

and it didn’t feel radically

different from Gloucester.

 

If that is a heron

it has quite a wingspan:

I'm not surprised

the dog doesn’t chase it.

 

(Barbican, London)

The phallus

of the Duke of York

is big enough for bragging rights

but I can't see it getting any action.

 

(St James’s, London: The Duke of York Column is a monument  to Prince Frederick, Duke of York (1763-1827), the second son of King George III, designed by  Benjamin Dean Wyatt, with the statue atop it by Sir Richard Westmacott raised in 1834)

 

How far from Windsor to London?

The original twenty-odd miles

takes on another hundred

by the time you get to Canada.

Fairport Convention

were at their peak in the seventies.

Now it’s just them

in the seventies.

(I saw Fairport Convention at the Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton in February 2025. To be fair, the problem isn’t so much fading powers as the lack of any replacement for Sandy Denny, who for example wrote and sang their best-known track – ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes?’ in 1969 and sang with them only 1968-70 and 1974-75 - not to mention Richard Thompson, their other top songwriter, who left in 1971)

 

Who is this as gold as brass?

And did they bother to paint the rear

of what we must assume should be

a very golden marble arse?

(St James’s, London – this is the Athenaeum , built in 1827-30 by Decimus Burton, home of the Athenæum Club and of the golden marble statue of Pallas Athenae by Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1867), who also put Nelson on his column)

Here are the moments

before the lifts

when I wonder:

will I find a severed head?

 

I would not go quite so far

as the titular echo of ‘tiresome’,

but it's true

that I've seen such things before.

 

(‘Trisome‘, 2000 by Anthony Cragg at the Arts University Bournemouth. A trisome is a chromosome occurring three times - rather the usual twice - in a cell. That aside, it’s a pretty typical Cragg.)

 

If we look like indecisive bricks

consider this: we sorted the order

to build ourselves -

the brief did not incorporate chromatics.

 

(Bournemouth)

Is discontinuity

the curse of life,

 or just what keeps it

interesting?

 

Why are these tulips so sad?

Is it because they are wilting?

Or are they only wilting

because they were discarded?

 

(Connaught Village, London)

 

Notice how

this ‘no dumping’ sign

demonstrates by way of warning

the very behaviour it seeks to prevent.

 

(Paddington, London)

 

How should I take this?

That all will be restful under the sky

or that I won’t have a roof

while the celestials do their thing?

 

(Premier Inn, Edgware Road, London)

 

Vertical trees

have had their time,

and they’ve been good

but this is the horizontal wood.

(Cambridge Heath, London)

 

These are the night railings

keeping by force

to their rainy day order,

but doubling up with shadow.

 

(Islington, London) 

 

These are blank times

by day and by night.

No wonder the faceless

are modelled in the shops.

(Mayfair, London: as of 2025, the faceless mannequin is very much in fashion) 

What sort of driver do they want?

dodgy parking dawdler,

demon paced dasher

or a dream parcel deliverer?

(Holborne, London)

 

To steer himself clear

he makes up a rule:

the blacker the blonde,

the smaller the ratio of ‘Hi!’ to ‘Fuck off!’.

 

 

 

Whoever thought that Valentines

was such a serious matter?

Is he pondering whether the message is right,

or wondering who it would suit?

(Train from London to Winchester, 13 Feb 2025) 

What kind of reception

is all that graffiti?

Yet it could be worse:

nothing here is legibly offensive.

 

(Millbrook, Southampton)

 

Not just any pothole

but our pothole, outside our house.

The affection that generates

is, however, limited.

 

If paving slabs are kept in place

by treasury tags

then the budget for street repairs

Is even more stretched than I’d thought.

 

If catkins

are the best that’s available

it might be best

not to walk home.

 

Some slippage

is inevitable 

when comparing the ideal

to the reality.

 

If I worked here

I'd be tempted to make an ill-tempered resignation

simply to be able to shout:

‘Fuck ING!’ 

(ING Bank, City of London)

If they’re going to be invisible

you’ll need your clothes as permanent

as the skin you'll see through them -

for how would you know when to throw them away?

 

(Fitzrovia, London)

 

The view through ‘View’

is rarely worth the framing:

I had to wait five minutes

just for a walker and dog.  

 

(Naomi Blake: ‘View’, 1977, in the gardens of Fitzroy Square, Fitzrovia, London)

Is whatever’s not allowed and when

under water far enough

to claim you were floating

clear of the rules? 

(Kings Cross, London)

This is an important cone 

crowned and cloaked

with its own praetorian guard,

and also an assistant. 

(Fitzrovia, London)

 

 

Grass: green

Tub: greener.

Water: greenest

of them all?

 

Execution would be too harsh

as a punishment for fly posting -

yet, were that applied for this offence,

I could at least appreciate the irony.

 

(Brussels)

Could all of this burst

like a bubble,

not just the fleeting excitement,

but the longest-standing stone?

 

(Cathedral square, Ghent)

 

The city of Ghent

seems very relaxed:

even the plants

get a chance to sit down.

 

(Ghent)

 

The tricky question

of whether to take the plunge.

‘Is the water too cold? Am I sure I can swim?’

before you realise, ‘Fuck it, I’m a duck!’

 

(Ghent)

 

If I were a tree

I wouldn't choose to be Belgian:

and, if I were Belgian,

I wouldn’t choose to be a tree.

 

(Brussels)

 

Late January

and it’s still Christmas in Brussels -

on account, I assume,

of the seasonal role of its sprouts.

 

(Brussels, 26 Jan 2025)

 

 

Do pigeons normally

hunt in threes?

Only if they come across

an exceptionally elusive chunk of bread.

 

(Bethnal Green, London)

 

Given that they can’t quite claim

to be parked between them,

what’s the punishment for these tins

violating double yellow lines?

 

(Bethnal Green, London)

 

 

These branches seem

to have kept themselves together OK,

but how far can the deconstruction go

before they stop being a tree?

 

(Cambridge Heath, London)

 

 

What is all this

pseudo-comic crap?

Wouldn’t it be quicker

to set out what you can flush down the loo?

 

(South Western Trains, Weymouth to Waterloo)

 

Is this an abstraction?

Not if you’re engaged

in the decidedly figurative matter

of trying to climb it.

 

(Parthian rock climbing gym, Southampton – my grandchildren are regulars)

 

Is this a campaign

for alcohol-free communions

or just a chance for an actress / model

to show some playful spirit?

(London underground  stations. Lucky Saint is a beer with just 0.5% alcohol. The adverts, timed to coincide with ‘dry January' 2025. feature photographs by Rankin. The agency involved explains that ‘the Lucky Saint name and brand world leans in to beer's brewing history that began in monasteries with monks hundreds of years ago, and this is where we’ve taken our tone of voice from as well.’) 

I'm not one 

for speciesist assumptions: 

here's a pigeon headed for 

the reader registration desk.

(British Library, London)

This looks useful

in being for more than the usual bikes:

seems any old thing

can be attached here for disposal.

 

(Clerkenwell)

 

3 a.m. …

Probably the optimum time

to suffer an emergency,

given the absence of traffic.

 

(Police car, Kings Cross, London)

What happens in Dulwich

stays in Dulwich, as the saying goes…

So I threw this twist of green into the station bin

after it had seen me round the village.

 

(Dulwich, London)

 

One of these flowers

makes extra sense:

could any bee resist

the lure of a backlit bloom?

 

(St James's, London)

 

He knew he had to mind the gap –

who hasn't heard that?

Some gap in the mind

must be what he fell down.

 

(Waterloo Station, London)

 

 

This is a reasonably popular model

among those who feel

that you don’t want a fence

to cut off the view.

You might not expect much heat

to be radiated

from a homeless unit on the street,

but at least this has a pipe.

 

(Somers Town, London)

 

‘Water meets beer’?

In fact, it’s all in the natural family:

water meets the ‘citrus blast’

of ‘Mountain Dew’.

 

(Fitzrovia, London)

Buildings made of stone? 

I guess it's an option

if you run out of bricks

or mud or straw.

 

(Holborn, London: Stone Buildings were constructed from 1774-80 as the first step in an ultimately unrealised plan to rebuild Lincoln's Inn entirely in stone)