I was never a great one for poems, even in my teenage years. I wrote a few, obviously, the last dated 1979, and a right cringe they are too. My desire to make patterns, shapes and sounds with words was always exorcised through song-writing. Over the years I must have written two hundred or so songs with Peter French, my song-writing parner, and the idea of writing poems as well never appealed to me.

But back in 1998 my chum Saleel Nurbhai and me organised the Lancaster Litfest’s celebration for National Poetry Day, and we decided to set a poetry competition. We offered a prize to the best poem written on the night of our event which contained the words ‘orange’ and ‘sausages’. We had been assured that there were no rhymes to either word, so we thought it might be fun. The winner, if memory serves me right, was Basil Ransome Davis, with this effort.

By the Orange River,
I sit
Eating sausages.

Superb, and a hundred times better than my effort. But I still quite like my little poem, so I’ve put it here for people to read. Give me another twenty years, and I might have another go.