14 Comments
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Mark Thomas's avatar

Honestly Matt, it’s like listening to poetry!

You’ve kept me company for a time on today’s dog walk, so thank you for a few minutes of calm 😊

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Bloody hell Matt, I think we lived down the road from you.

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Matt Inwood's avatar

If your family owned the newsagent at the end of the road then it was my mate Doddy, not me, that was stealing packets and packets of Panini stickers in 1985, promise.

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Nope, my family hardly owned a newspaper. And I would have easily guessed it was Doddy, I bought the stickers off him.

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Matt Inwood's avatar

So that's how he funded those Run DMC and Beastie Boys patches for his bomber jacket!

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Vanilla Black's avatar

Probably. I think he’s an MP now.

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Kirstie Young's avatar

Lovely works as always, I'd forgotten about putty and now can very much smell it in my imagination

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Matt Inwood's avatar

Thanks, Kirstie. Beware: putty highly addictive once you start sniffing! ;)

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Mark Diacono's avatar

Lovely Matt. Duck egg blue and the smell of putty are very much of my childhood too,

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Matt Inwood's avatar

Thank you, Mark. I think Pete and I once put in the back window with a football or similar. I'm guessing it could only have been Dad that then fixed it. I can still smell and push at it with my fingers now. (And was it so very normal that people did their own glass repairs back then!?)

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Christine McFadden's avatar

‘Desuetude’. Meaning? Never heard that word

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Matt Inwood's avatar

Quite new to me, too. I loved it as soon as I discovered it: 'a state of disuse'.

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Sharron Bassano's avatar

Such evocative lines, such images-

"Twin boys would circle that stump in dizzying runs: a maypole of neglect, colour-ribboned by the innocence of children at play."

"... the smart of that broken skin inside the handle of those scissors, the soft fingerprint indentations we formed into the setting putty..."

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Matt Inwood's avatar

So glad you enjoyed, Sharron. Thank you.

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