Annual Journal 2025
A journal for 2025 of personal events and my perceptions echoing Louis MacNeice's famous book-length poem in 1938, Autumn Journal.
MacNeice's work was written as world war seemed inevitable and the future looked very dark. Today, 2025 seems just as dangerous and equally as unpredictable.
Annual Journal 2025 is an attempt to set this year in the context of MacNeice's perspective then - a poem a month. It's also a mark of appreciation for Louis' poetry which means a great deal to me.
* Click a month
January
June
January
Events:
Trump is President
The 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
Echoes echoes echoes
Tracking the reality of that dark year
Classical analysis, the dog, the lover, the squeezing of hope and the emerging ominous thorns of fear
Here to tell it how it is now, this year
A world still in tears
Falling from a ravaged, vast grain-store land
Dropping as they always have from ancient Bible Belt sands
And in the hearts and minds of ether souls pouring out their pain
Aggressors surging in anonymity
Forging forth from room, village, town and city
Screaming screens, spitting tech blood, devoid of pity
Angry at everything
Everyone else to blame
Especially the old order, the failing towers of long-lost competence
Pay-off politicians, celebrity Royals, a Fourth estate in free-fall from lost dominance
That heavy year, a tipping point of industrial death
So what lies in store for all of us instead?
Watching an orange wrecking ball crash land
Like bird shit, curse and
Speak with flaming forked tongue in a language bereft of understanding
Yet loved by millions in throw-back thrall to a dream once demanding
Energy, ambition, never say die
Not envy, excuses and apple-pie in the sky
And now the shit has landed and the devil reality has come
Talking drivel from the national pulpit
So crazy he cannot help it
But he can, he can, a mouth crammed full of itself
Such monied nonsense, so stupid yet nectar to the mob
Under the noses of the billionaire plotters who cannot get enough
Here for the ride to see what more they can stuff
Into their pockets without any end
Richer than Cresus and all he might lend
Order and the right thing no contest for the bottom line, the data mines
Down to the depths where the Chief lies in State
With all that hate
Watching the fox
Pumping venom out of the box
As the baying deludeds cry to be great again
The same hoards who can’t understand that things aren’t the same
When the dollar ruled a policed world
When the Moon saw the flag - was it unfurled?
But the Saigon helicopters took flight, portents of decline
Power running out of time
Rainbow countries shouting this is mine
Poison now dripping out of the Chief’s fat pen
Signing away sanity again
Farewell Paris, goodbye equality
Welcome back insurrection, all in the name of fake piety
Throwing oil onto the wind-blown fires
Drill baby drill for future pyres
Renaming by ideology, apparently this is how things should be spelt
Who would believe this, what would the giant from Kentucky have felt?
Aided by the Nazi saluter
The Disrupter
X marking his black spot, the polluter
Who never pays, poisoning waters now not safe to swim in
Free speech skewed by algorithms making
Friend turn against friend the world over
So many conspiracies to uncover
And all at war with one another
There is no Shrangrla
The kernel of MAGA.
How poignant the survivors’ slow march
Four score years, the chambers still black in their sleep
Train, wire, smoke, gates,
Living down to simple fate
Horrors Louis couldn’t see but his journal foretold
Before the madness, this side of chaos
Autumn leaves lines that wanted to tell us
Beware the gathering storms when outrages become norms
It had started then and it has started again
Where it leads no-one knows
Echoes echoes echoes
February
Events:
Trump splitting apart the world order I have known all my life
Reflections reflections reflections
Timespan arc out of a world gone mad
Prism light from darkness across a life so far run
Peace hard won and held at the macro level until
Whatever the future holds, whatever its will
The killing had stopped but the killing went on
And on it flows as human nature is hard wired to enact
The ranked dead across the globe witness to the fact
Double talk in conferences, diplomacy deals
Power bases alternating from year to year
Today allies at the garden party
Tomorrow enemies at the gate
Yet the timespan accord has held, prosperity has grown
Now lives not counted out in character but how much is owned
Always was but hope stood at the door of a new dawn
Health and homes for heroes - the plan was actually drawn
Parts came to pass, the progressive intention still remains although in shadow
Despite the thunder of the market
The kick in the teeth of profit
The slap in the face of greed
The clamour for credit
And few taking heed
Of the consequences the arc now faces
Humanity too far down the line
Living for now, the instant, the moment
A planet running out of time?
History is written in winners and losers
A crown usurped, a kingdom gained
What once was wrong is newly sustained
Empires rising and falling in the blink of eyes
Hardly an echo on the light stream from stars
Treaties ripped up, old adversaries friends
Who can we depend on? It depends
A lifetime’s arc in a lull between volcano eruptions
And no-one knows when the next blast will blow
Humanity writhes in imperfection
Our species is not the only one to have ruled the world
What are our expectations?
Reflections reflections reflections
March
Events:
Money dominates the headlines
Money Money Money
Bloodstream of the world
Curse, cure, contamination, saviour, sickness, salvation
Trading life’s time for the need, selling out for the greed
Risking life and limb and bone and skin to escape the very mess you’re in
Smoothing of hands in every land
Down to the depths of the damned
Rose petaled days without the spur without the pull
Living in clouds when days were full
Carefree apple times in town or field
No wallet as a shield
In the sunlit moment, the feel of rain on face
Tasting the season and the next, it’s trace
Accepting and being in no thrall
Walking shoeless to the thrill of it all
Smiling families in the street happy to be free
Happy in their serendipity
While haunted faces on taxis tubes and trains
Tear at their souls for their gains
When is enough? How much is enough?
When the heart can rest with the cupboard full
When the wonders in every second let you see it all
When desire melts into content
When all of heaven has been sent
Some know some don’t some can some won’t
The winners still let little things pleasure
Even if their part is so much less another’s measure
Easy with their level of gold
Easy with the dice they have rolled
And can watch the sun rise and set at no cost.
How little is nothing? Something to prevent hunger and enough for Christmas?
Less the norm across the houses to the ships
Just managing they call it now
Forgotten tears that proved how
How much is comfortable? Affordable is the reality
Has a cascade of change changed anything?
Of value?
We are who we have always been
Nothing.
Dreaming.
Comfortable.
Understanding
Money money money
April
Events:
Beauty on a trip to Inverness, Scotland
The ugliness of so much of the world
Yellow yellow yellow
Country bathed
Landscape unscathed
Despite death at Culloden
Clans scattered and the field littered with strewn remains
Nothing was the same - the same rule ruled
Only harsher
The Bonny disaster
But yellow still grew age on age
Now resplendent in April’s unforeseen sun
Gorse fringed views
Vistas crowned with crystal clear blue
Spring’s pure stolen shining day after day
Scotland in beauty’s caress at Inverness
The steaming train on Harry’s arches
Magical sights for every departure
Curving where the Pretender came
His folly dancing into history with his fame
Mountains and brooks, castles and lochs
Picture postcard reality shocks
Expectation into belief, such wonder exists, it lives, it is
Where in the world - it is this.
Then there is that
Poison at news-stands, at the end of the speaker, the 24-hour incessant babble
In the grit and grime of ugly city rubble
From the frontlines of today’s Cullodens
With the wilting evil of the winners
At the gates of stolen estates
On every lip of the troll
Scouring their blackest webs for their mounting toll
All of it, the never-ending flow
Human waste and corruption in every dark seed sown
How many battles since rising with every Prince
Darkness upon the lands across the decades
They always said the costs were too high
But they forget and every next time wonder why
Man’s progress from the cave
From the painted hand, the mammoth’s form, the antelope’s line
Trace the graph of each generation’s wave
The kernal black works repeated time after time
Will man or woman ever escape the fate?
Or is the lid sealed, has it always been too late?
Yellow topped mountains
Jet high fountains
Rocks down to the sea
Wind wavering woods
Sublime it is all understood
For all eternity
Black black heart
Man’s inner dark part
Shadow upon shadow
From yesterday to tomorrow
Since humanity’s start
Yellow black yellow black
The balance has always been close
Private paradises public hells
We wait with baited breath for whom the bell tolls.
Yellow yellow yellow
May
Events:
My team Charlton at Wembley for a play-off final
Football so much of my life
Play play play
Game sport battle life
Local green Wembley lush
A happy sport an epic strife
Learnt from the cradle an Island way
Park playground any ground play
Sunday a mass match instead of a Mass
Readings from a round bible, passes for a pulpit
The goal of existence a goal
Saturday matches made in a valley of green
Watching gods run under yellow suns
Robin Reds flying while gloomy skies
Swooped in from the Thames
A river away from home
And three score years away under a new Wembley arch
The same red and the same green, a different epoch but the spirit the same
Play play play the game
Rec park pitch stadium arena
Quicker stronger the instinct keener
The inner interplay - inside the DNA
Bound by the fence and the wall
Nothing to stop the call
Across the lines no fears at all
Knowing the score, knowing what was for
Hundreds of hours, days and weeks and more
Even Christmas time in the snow
Understanding the ebb and flow
The spin and twist of a ball in the air
Hitting the spot - anywhere
An aesthetic pleasure before physical pressure
Skill as art-form, satisfaction the measure
Winning not the aim, the winner the game
Then home and away
Fixtures a fixture year after year
The team of the day - whatever colour the shirt
Sides tactics positions
Fighting the opposition
Still fun but serious stuff
Playing well though sometimes not good enough
Winning losing on equal terms
Until they weren’t
When ends won and not the way
When status not heart held sway
Realising art alone didn’t do
What was required when the stakes grew
So back to the happy times
Carefree between the white lines
When the poetry rhymed
The game gene inherited
Passed on the passing way
Into their DNA
Living their joy better than living my own
In time piece by piece their seed sown
Right stuff, right style
Right mix of tough and guile
Achieving much more than I had ever known
Standing under the Wembley arch once more
Flags in the red breeze blown by victory
Euphoria in success
But the happy sport declines by excess
Too much money beyond value
Too much hype too good to be true
Drowning in betting for impossible dreams
Electronic whistles killing the crowd’s screams
Playing video games is not the same
Play up, play up, play the game
The art, the spin, the control wins the day
Play play play
June
Events:
Karl Jenkins’ conducts The Armed Man in concert
Art at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition
Iran bombed
Arms arms arms
Concert hall conflict zone
Music of peace when there is no peace
Creative spirits analyse the world, visions, loves, hates
At Burlington House in Piccadilly
Making sense… is that so silly?
Even as madmen trade blows deciding our fates
As bombs drop, as leaders atop
Ivory towers survey the world as they would wish
Anthems play, pictures tell
Of the billions who wish their families well
And safe through their years
Free from fear
It was once said we all breathe the same air, we are all mortal and we all cherish our children’s futures
It is true.
Arms fell silent from a world in anger
Chaos had swallowed them up
Peace for the new Millennium
Peace the new continuum
But the arms men said no
Threats from any stranger
They will rob you, drink from your cup
A new old wave of political tune
Arm ‘cos they are coming soon
Never the status quo
Guns and bombs, portraits and lacquered pots
Arms art, destruction creation
Our world through different eyes
Yet who has the power?
Presidents deploying drunk on their flags?
Artists seeing beyond horizons and price tags?
Who wins commeth the hour?
The armed men rampage oblivious to song
Eager for dominion, striking the dinner gong
Composers seeking peace in the depths of sound
Glorifying silence in their silent resound
Shadow set against its nemesis light
Often in balance as day and night
Then suddenly a knock to planetary waves – freak storm, earth quakes
Louis saw the emerging plight
The inevitable fight
Dawns and evenings when the world sleeps or wakes
Bogey men at the door presaging war
Candles lit and flames of peace again
High art and low talk
Beauty walks as evil stalks
The outcome is unknown
Arms arms arms
July
​
Events:
A road trip along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way
Conflict across the world continues
Lands lands lands
Taken stolen conquered invaded
New flags pitched alien rights paraded
The Emerald split as dealers dealt
Separate hues of green
Lines drawn whatever pain felt
Whatever the shades of grey in between
Nuance beyond the Empire’s grasping ken
Entrenched thinking so soon from the trenches
Same lack of vision the same men
Troubles at the double in time
Shattered lives shattered knees
Despite the landscape sublime
Until today’s delicate peace
Mountains falling to the Atlantic
Curving beaches like crescent Moons
Water water in each bend of the roads so straight
Radio playing the merry tunes
How could so much beauty hold so much hate?
Who owns the land?
Which people tribe or native is true?
The human march as old as recorded time
When was it right to call this earth mine?
Field, farm, village, city, state
Age on age order upon order
Punctured by violence, dislocated by discord
Usurped by Kings handed out by decree
No-one’s for eternity
When Roman legions took what they wanted
When India shrank before the Company’s might
When the Spanish brought their diseases
When the indigenous Indian turned red before white
These were the takers’ rules
Armour, horse, rifle, gunboat
However rank and file might defend
The larger the bigger the more powerful won in the end
While outrage and revenge might keep hope afloat
But now we live in the modern day
Laws underline the state of play
They can’t just walk in can they?
But they can, if the price is right
If the lie is so big, if the power is in the wrong hands
If the risk is worth it for the land
If they can steal in plain sight
Where next for the Russian bear?
What will be Taiwan’s fate?
How long will Greenland stay green?
Is Canada the fifty-first State?
What price the ravage of Gaza?
What of Ukraine will be left?
Ireland and Scotland still rate their chances
Would England feel bereft?
The Motherland the Fatherland
Why should we care at all?
Paris, Oslo, Vancouver, Bruges
Mean more to me that Hartlepool
The land and the flag, aye there’s the rub
The sign on the pole
Land the love, nation the soul
Until we stop and think differently
Lands lands lands
​
August
Events:
A holiday to Majorca - 50 years since the first time
Time time time
Fifty years ago a time of firsts
Maiden flight, first maiden
Time as an adult away
Majorcan sun having fun making hay
Sangria tipping down my throat
The grotto was blue on the little boat
Tanned, laughter on the window sill
We were young we blazed and time stood still
Half a century and time has marched on
Decades of firsts life passing to now
Back under the sky where we danced and talked in the moonlight
Sharing secrets in a relaxed bar
As she spoke several languages at dinner with new friends
Back after the years in between
Back with that future then unseen
Back viewing the past with a nostalgic lens
All the ups and downs and ins and outs
Worries mistakes and doubts
Wins successes and laughing about
What was and what might have been our lot
If this or that happened or not
Life full of unknowns until they were known
Five years before our wedding
Love falling into place
Ten years before the children
Running running running our race
Keys tapping on the Mile End Road
Recording by the brewery wall
Looking over the Palace gates
By Marble Arch up The Mall
Down where they forged the gems
Back to the metamorphosis isle
Out to the three seaxes land
Full Shoreditch shining in style
Days at the coalface
Years campaigning in words
Making noises making waves
Making sure everyone heard
Filling the short long seasons
Memories passing into memory
Birthdays and close ones passing
The ebb and flow of every day
A world awaited beyond the Mallorcan maiden
Cities all over the continents
Misty fjords, Las Vegas tables
Costa Rican jungle, Aswan Dam
Rotorua geysers, Table Mountain
Orcas off Vancouver, hidden tunnels in Vietnam
Fifty years – the golden cove has spread its wings
The night green lane she walked with me long gone
Holiday architecture filling the tree-lined spaces
But the sweet echoes of SOS still linger on
Fifty years back with a new generation
Their Majorcan sun not their maiden sky
Their world already opened up, another nation
Passing them by flying so high
Fifty years - when time was never-ending
Time for anything - a life eternal
Time running - liquid lingering limitless
Time to savour life’s carnival
Time when time was timeless
Time time time
September
​​​
Events:
Robert Redford died
British and England flags being raised across the country
​
Finis finis finis
Bob on the far horizon
Beyond the silver screen
The magic in between
Like 2HB for Roxy’s dream
His beauty walked the flickering night
Stalking moving picture sight
Tears on tiers, row on row
Million dollar looks for every tomorrow
Raindrops to a sting
A natural thing
A golden child
In Africa or Wyoming wild
On a President’s trail
For truth’s holy grail
Art the means the method the way
Turning our questions to reasons why
Why we love why we die
Why we laugh why we cry
Art if the star can truly shine
Like a sun’s dance
Like a way we were romance
One of a breed, one of a kind
This fleeting life a flicker in time
A scene seeming eternal, a grain of sand
Once so vivid technicolour vitality
Breathing honeyed air
So fine so fair
A face turning story to reality
Paula aching to be recognised
Smithy ducking under the bough
Random hearts lost but found
Their harvest reaped somehow
Hyper addictive chemical
All the boy would allow
Seeping into the bloodstream
Flowing even now
Spotted dogs a golden finger
Santa Anna winning the fight
What to do about Maria the singer
Goodies and baddies who was wrong who was right?
Children going but be back soon
So they can fly a kite?
A cine paradise
Writing all about it - Movie Night
When the whole works - when the work works
What is made up can become real
Can make a spirit soar, make an essence make sense
Yet sense lies asleep as the clouds of 2025 loom
When flags fly high in the streets in hate’s frenzied bloom
Not swastikas, yet, but the same base philosophy blows in the wind
Louis’ Autumn ringing like a bell
The same colours rippling on poles on the foothills of hell
This is not a movie the actors are real
Scratch the surface of today’s everyman
As the 24 hour non-stop news reveals
Racism feeding on pathetic emblems across the land
England for the English, but who are they?
Scratch the surface what England appears
With the Caliban from Clacton stoking our fears?
A country cannot remake its past
Illusion, delusion to think it could
Real life, real threats, real issues require serious people
Not a script made in Hollywood
Can a country make its future?
Can a broken society mend?
How long will an England state survive?
The beginning is over and this is not the end
Finis finis finis
​
October
​​
Events:
Lake District - nearing the topping of all 214 Wainwright peaks
The wonder and beauty of the Lakes
Personal harmony there as disharmony stalks the world
Harmony harmony harmony
Deep cut high ridge banks Glenderaterra
Tomb rock pool mist clad Haystacks - Alfred rests innominate
Lush Sallows grass curving wall arc Sour
Serrated Crinkle edges past three tarns
Crummock’s steep neighbour over the water where bells ring blue
Gate 55 Whinlatter’s lonely windy cairn
Red, dropping red stones mighty Mickeldore
Boulder strewn Atlantic silence Caw
Great Gable’s sunny window low down Wastwater
Peaking Langdales hovering Mickelden’s grace
Harmony soothes the heavy wanderer
All is right with a breaking world
Whatever religion whatever believer
In this realm under its blanket curled
Humped Causey, the first, maybe the last - where ashes rest
Flight of Heron to Sheffield
Horizon Dodds past Sticks all the way to Seat
Mounds of Mell on sight from Penrith
Steep Steel watching over Dunmail
Castle above the jewel
Ravine rising boulder field Great Bourne
Over peat hags seeking for deer Nab
Wide open Gowbarrow along Ullswater’s peace
Pinnacle Steeple’s pulpit stand
Harmony lies in the tracks and trails
Sweeps the mind and spirit
Whether sun whether hail
Taking time taken to the limit
Bracken ground running forever
Scree down rolling crunching
Criss-crossing water traces - meeting merging force
Clipped tight grass wild lawn wild garden
Stepping stones stairways reaching
Bridges bridging there and here
Miring mud oozing soft
Pools puddles skimming wading
Forest tracks wide meandering
Heather red, gorse golden
Harmony seeps out high and low
Tastes like vibrancy
Whoever comes whoever shows
This land, this earth, this country
Sacred places all over the world
Sanctuaries lost in time
Citadels built, churches erected, stones raised
Here is mine
Scared people all over the world
Always have been, their lot in history
Private harmonies, public chaos
Their stories continue still today
Reality seems overwhelming
The gentle act crushed by harsh voices eager for more power
The simple hope stamped on
The door to sunlight slammed
Harmony has to face down spitting rage
Seeking to live even inside the cage.
Harmony harmony harmony
​