Not Many Surprises Down The Goldhawk Road These Days

After reading extracts from Iris Whelstone’s account of my life

(the Authorised Biography, written I see with my “full                             cooperation”)

in this morning’s Sunday Telegraph Review,

I dare not even begin to imagine what my autobiography will be          like.

Ms Whelstone I read has “cast a sympathetic eye on a life more           remarkable

for” blah blah blah “than for” blah blah blah blah.

You get the gist, and it’s probably true

– and even if it’s not true, who am I to argue?

I didn’t have the heart to read it word for word

or the stomach to digest it whole. In the end

(and by the end I was just looking for names I recognised)

I went back to bed with a bottle of brandy and watched telly.

The phone rang twice before I passed out. 

I can’t say I’m going to put the record straight.

The record is there for everyone to see

and hear. Replay it as ye will, nothing changes the enduring                truth

that someone stubbed a fag out in the middle of track two

in nineteen seventy-six.

I suppose I at least will be able put a name and a face

to that scar, if anyone is still interested after Ms Whelstone’s

comprehensive knife-job – I still can’t remember

giving her the run of my cutlery, but if she says I did

I suppose I must have done. I’ll be more careful.

These days I can barely trust myself with a fucking spoon.