The only S I’m getting is a white upper case one in a blue square,
little green phone icons flickering on for a crackly conversation of connect.

As long distance a relationship as my geography can barely imagine,
our bookmarked world clock pages tell us what time it is for the other.

Between toast, kettle and shower routines, you tell me of your day,
the pint you’ve just enjoyed and the early night now imminent.

Yawned accounts of tiredness and even earlier starts are my daily tales.
Groans about morning meetings and cold, dark weather take course.

Much missed snores and days of procedure play out between calls,
the second digital dial tone of each day spinning accounts full circle.

Searching and usually not finding fresh detail to report,
you hear of projects you don’t quite get and evening runs to stretch them out.

You’re always mid ironing routine, heading on out to the training field
to gear up for another brave session addressing a life long dream.

I’m usually keeping an eye on the curry filling the kitchen with spiced mist,
flicking through television channels at two laps of the guide a sitting.

Weeks are manageable. Office regulation controls your absence’s sting.
The two days in-between slab out a stage for theatrical memories that ache.

For all the Saturday morning hangovers and huge Sunday runs
cold pillows and a half load of overdue washing up reminds me you’re away.

Everyone does their best or what they think is the most apt way to note
the script we work hard to read, one line at a time.

Enquiries into how you’re doing can feel like my effort’s on mute.
Other times I know it’s the only way they find to acknowledge the score.

Somehow the long slog is almost complete. Twenty-eight weeks down.
Nineteen sleeps to cross off the wall chart – half a soppy joke, two halves not.

My calendar is building a full season’s worth of celebration.
No belt has enough holes for all of the dinners and drinks I have planned.

Inevitable ‘Will everything be as lovely as before?’ thoughts crop up
but less frequently than the smiles of memories past and to be made.

A leafy lunch at The Approach, beer passed Sovereign House,
and a feast at Prescot Street’s hidden gem are closer than in months.

Forced but kind reassurances of friends on hearing of your big trip
will soon be history, cozy alongside dull evening meals for one.

People have told me that they could never have done it,
like at any point we had or defined a choice. It was roles we just had to take.

See you at Paddington when your express train arrives.
I’ll be the one calling ‘action’ on the scene I’ve re-written 198 times.

What world has these guys boarded from,
talking ticket brokers for the national rail?
Comparing first with standard class service;
a woopsy daisy, upper class admin fail.

Wait until they need to use the toilets.
Their posh accents will lardy dar about that.
Oh, to be an uppity, slumming it, commuter
is to sound like a total and utter prat.

Shall we get a train to Paris?
It’s a place I’ve never been.
It’s so close and quick to visit,
boxing ticks I haven’t seen.

We can drink in all the places
our heroes wrote their songs
and eat lots of strange foods,
pretending that we belong.

At home we can look back,
talk of it like Bowie in Berlin.
I’ll get out my drunken lyrics
we’ll never attempt to sing.

Let us get a train to Paris,
for two days of lunacy not love,
drinking glasses of gin for breakfast,
seeing faces in clouds above.