Unplanned weekend in Blackpool
(From my poetry book 'Changing Carriages at Birmingham New Street)
The latest piece on my substack account is a second piece from my new10th and final full-length poetry book ‘Changing Carriages at Birmingham New Street’.
As discussed before, Changing Carriages at Birmingham New Street’ was began in 2017 during the creation of my third book “The Birth of Autumn” which then took a life on its own afterwards.
The story itself talks through a series of memories told by an unnamed narrator of firstly of a friendship he had growing up with a girl called Sarah who came back into his life after over a twenty-year gap with the pair of them in deeply unhappy marriages changing everything forever.
Inspired by the clarify in Hugo Williams's book dock leaves and the expressive nature of Paul Auster’s poetry, this book will take the reader on a series of journeys up and down the northwest of England and beyond using their adventures in towns and cities to show how everything changes often without realising.
The second piece ‘Unplanned Weekend at Blackpool’ is one of the earliest poems written for this book and one of the starkest also talking of a weekend away early in the relationship for the couple when a night out in Blackpool went out in a very unexpected way.
The book can be bought here - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CFJRJ59C/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1JGMBEW69Y08V&keywords=andy+n+changing+carriages+at+birmingham+new+street&qid=1691938619&sprefix=andy+n+changing+carriages+at+birmingham+new+stree%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1
The Video for this book can be seen here -
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Unplanned weekend in Blackpool
Do you remember, Sarah
those purple open windows
in that hotel on Albert Road
and the beer-soaked train tickets
tucked into that cup on the table,
when you said you loved me for the first time?
*
That sunset that lit up the clouds
that made them look on fire
and the rain on the pier
just outside the tower
like bleared music
caught between dusk and dawn.
*
Madame Tussauds
where you nearly got us thrown out
before pleading with the guard
two hours afterwards
when we missed our train back
to let us sleep on the platform.
*
Do you remember, Sarah
the receptionist's face at that hotel
when you put the waterworks on
before sneaking me in afterwards
after he took pity on you
and let you stay for nothing.
*
I can still see the look.
Carried in his eyes
As you smiled
while winking at me to hurry up
like your head was on a stick
half buried in the light.
*
I refused to say anything
even when you got there ten minutes after me
proclaiming that it was a lucky escape
repeating the Polish, you had just confused him with
all the way into bed
shushing me all night long asleep.