The Day I Met Alan Bennett

Picture postcard perfect that morning
I stood on the street like an honest Scots pine
phoning my Bath writer friend. I had to look twice -
suddenly, on the other side - Alan Bennett and Rupert!

I was flabbergasted,
but he was necessarily guarded,
How are you, Mr. Bennett?

And me wearing sandals like a Glastonbury hippy;
no hob-nailed boots for the sturdy north.
He smiled, but noted my footwear;
obviously incongruous like the lady in the van
or Thora Hird come back to life.

I had a studio flat and an allotment,
I had Alan Bennett as a distant neighbour,
I was on a pig's back, but a little bird told me
I was not long for Settle town.

The best narrator of Kenneth Grahame's
Wind in the Willows
passed on by like Mr. Badger, onwards
to the wild wood or just the railway station.