Meeting the Gypsy Kings

When I was a teen

I held my nose and retching 

Downed a cup of slimy

Mushroom tea

At my friends house

In Kentish Town


Whilst my friends 

mother’s swish party 

Was in full swing

we sat in a circle

In her basement bedroom

Staring at our hands


Perhaps Hours passed 

I found myself

Upstairs 

In a room full of

Short Mexican Men

Who all looked the same

Propelled by 

Uncontrollable giggles 

In a flash I was back to 

my pulsating hands, 

our circle in the basement

Spliffs and 

The Beastie Boys

15 years later

I spent 36 hours 

Listening to 

‘The Best of the Gypsy Kings’ 

On repeat

Midwife to a woman in a labour

That was as stuck as I was

My intuition screamed at me

To change

The music but

I didn’t know then what 

I do know now

20 years later 

Perched in an

Andalucian white village bar

Listening to Bamboleo

Shattered but Incorruptible

Skin and Bones

I am sitting in the bath now as I write this

Squeaky-clean and supersmooth

Surrounded by skin and bones


A rare cafe con leche

Too late in the day

Kept me up all night

flat on my back 

In the dark

Listening to cockerels

And that faraway donkey

My ears full of tears


I miss you mum

I miss you knowing the whereabouts 

of even my most hidden moles and scars


The last of cremated remains of the late 

Jennifer Hope Woolfenden

Sat beside my bed 

in a little plastic urn 

inside a little white cardboard box

A Christmas gift from my brother


Once the kids are out,

I thought

I will eat some of your ashes

I thought

I’ll run a hot bath, 

I will eat some of their grandmothers ashes

And I will cry, yes

That's what I’ll do

A homeopathic dose of you

Will sort this grief out

At last they leave

I am in the bathroom

I take some of you in my mouth 

And its gritty of course


And then it all

Makes perfect sense

A body scrub for the bereaved

I am sitting in the bath now as i write this

Squeaky clean and supersmooth

Surrounded by my skin and your bones.

3am on the 13th of July 1995

3am on the 13th of July 1995 found me out on the fire escape of the Whittington Hospital, London, dancing to samba on my walkman.

My father had been dead 1 hour. The moon was full and the nurses were preparing tea.

There was no happy ending. He never did get better, just worse and worse.

That brilliant, generous and selfish, fucked up man who confused us all was dead earlier than predicted.

The two fingers on his right hand permanently stained yellowy brown from his 40 a day. His skin remarkably smooth. He was 60 I was 23. What a relief. What a shame. What a waste. I danced.

At 7am driving out of the hospital car park the skies opened. It was impossible to drive. We sat in the car. My mother, elder sister, younger brother and I and let the sky cry for us.