NEW ENQUIRIES DAILY 2025

In order of composition, newest at the top. 

Photographs from Ashurst, New Forest unless indicated otherwise.

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)