National Poetry Day

So, of course, I wrote a poem. Well, I knew I was going to, for a couple of days. First there was Jeremy Hunt at the Tory Party conference, confident that in no time at all he'd be able to staff the new approved, no-foreigners NHS. No surprise there. He knows about this stuff. He's been responsible for more British doctors leaving the NHS than anyone in history, so presumably you just turn the switch the other way, and it's all hunky dory.

then I remembered an amazing snippet from four years ago. Hunt was in trouble over the B Sky B negotiations, because he'd been cosying up to the Murdochs. Michael Gove, another Murdoch acolyte, toured the Radio studios in Hunt's support, saying why he should keep his job. Because he was intelligent and far-sighted? Oh, no. Because he was a terrific Latin American dancer, and did "an amazing lambada." You couldn't make it up.

That gave me my central image, the fluent, agile Hunt, dancing out of trouble. So I sat at the breakfast table in my dressing gown, finishing off the coffee and toast as I scribbled a twelve stanza account of Hunt's career - all rhyming, over 20 rhyme-sounds, but none of them with "Hunt." Cut it down to 8, send off a couple of begging e-mails, and that evening I'm performing it at Liz Lefroy's poetry evening in Shrewsbury. That was my part of National Poetry Day, and I had a ball.