Memories compressed under a thin sheet of glass,
A camera first and telephone last.
My laughter, my pride and my joy it stores,
Joylessly sealed in a glass and metal sandwich.
But this little device taking over my life,
Has one disadvantage:
A finite memory full to bursting,
Warning me it's 'Dangerously Low on Space'.

Just as a frog cannot relate to a tadpole,
He could not recognise his younger self.
No retrospective map of life had he,
No string-tied bundles of diaries
Or heavy-hearted Journals
To reunite him with the naïf
Who floated along life's river
Unaware of being navigated by others,
Others who rowed but did not instruct
And abandoned ship on the stroke of his eighteenth
Leaving him overawed and falling overboard,
To eventually flounder upon the shores of independence
Until he was forced to stand on his own two feet of clay,
Like some evolving amphibian
Waddling into life,
Stomping and stumbling in the quagmire of society.
A faux pas here, a faux pas there,
Slow and painful lessons
That built resilience and self-reliance
Resulting in a proudly self-made man,
Now unaccustomed to failure
And whose memories of humiliating failure
Have sunk to the bottom of the river of his life.

The weather was changeable,
A warming sun for the previous hour,
Then, without warning,
The wind rose high,
The roof rose higher:
No use running for cover, I thought,
Since the cover had gone the way of my courage.
You see, I had a role to fulfil
Sure, its fulfillment in sunny spells was a breeze
But in a Force Ten gale?
(Cue howls of laughter)
Progress was at the pace of a snail
And nerves are torn to ribbons
(Much like the poor flags).
Was it life or death?
Well, it depended on how much you didn't wish to die.
Luckily for me, my aim in life is not to witness death
And that is why I pushed on,
And huffed and puffed
Until we got our Lifeboat to the stricken drunken Jetski pilots.

We heard a creak in the attic
I sent my wife to investigate.
She's still up there,
Negotiating with our new-found tenant
Who is totally unrepentant
For having snuck into our home
And setting up camp.

The polite crowd clap and whoop
Their brogues and plimsoles tap the floor.
Yeah, they worship and adore
This little mess of a group.

Their tunes were never mainstream
Which is just how the cool kids like it
Their identities pursue the dream:
Reject the norm and fight it.