Deep in the north, beyond the withered arm of the M1,
there is a town where the people catch stars out of the sea,
a silent, somnolent market settlement sagging onto a barricade of pebbles
that line up in loose file against the dark mongol waves.

And every new years day, the people head out in fleets of dinghies and mute anticipation, and dip rods of slow silver under the diaphanous bleakness.
And within the same minute up they spring, cold and white and terrified
like mad geese in the eccles cake purple night,
before they are placed inside of heavy jars and ferried back
to hum in basements or dangle like bangles off the angles of cornershops through the year.

The star fishermen don’t make a big deal of it,

if you ask them why they do it, they’ll shrug and say ’”tis a bloody job”,
and the town stays sleeping off the edge of the damp downs
its precious cargo hidden from genocidal eyes.

And there are women in that town with bosoms like nebula clouds,
lilting between pubs in the maze of winter,
spangled in leopard print flags and chuckles,
and necklaces made of burning hydrogen
that light the sandstone way between reservoirs of ale.
This town, this town, has not got much time left.

I wrote the note, closed up my water bill, locked the door,
and got on the next train north, the graffiti of my past follies
tagged high over the shopping centre walls.

Now I am buckarooing canvas bags over county borders,
leaving a sugar lump for the White Horse of Westbury,
a Lucozade for the Running Man,

a Starburst for the Lickey Hills,  

pulling out of the soggy orbit of the West,

and I think of you granddad,

I think of how you tramped the dales on a pie laden pilgrimage,
your wife like a snarling, racist sheepdog in tow.

I think of the music of the keys jangling in your pocket.
I think of you in the desert in 1942,
a man who never left Yorkshire billeted off the shores of Tripoli,
how your cream tea skin must have flaked and reddened in the Mameluk heat,
how you haggled in the market place across the language barrier
over a decorated bowl worth pennies
in the middle of war you never really talked about.

You never really talked about anything,

save for that one time you gave me the Yorkshireman’s advice 

Do all, see all, say nowt
Eat all drink all pay nowt
And if thou ever does owt for nowt

Do it for thisen

Advice I have never ever adhered to,
Most days I do nothing, see nothing, 

say everything that comes screaming through my frontal lobe 

like I was a gatling gun of words,
I eat little, drink little, 

pay through the nose for my life decisions,
and if I ever do owt for nowt, it’s probably because I’m traipsing up and down this used teabag of a sovereign state shooting hollow-point phrases at rooms full of blank stares.

I never shot nazis.
I never learned learned to be tough in defeat
like empty snow-capped coal mines that slouch upon the heather,
like working mens clubs gutted into beery shells.
I never learned when to be quiet and get on with things,
so I never came to your funeral granddad,
just emailed some t-shirt-back platitudes to mum and went on holiday anyway.
I spent so much time trying to be good at things I never learned to just be good.

I come from a line of southern fairies
whose gossamer wings have flapped all over the world
but come back inevitably to cosy first world nests.

A man in a suit sat next to me on the train is reading a book called 

12 steps to Self Confidence,
and as the etymological roots of the town names twist up into viking knots:
Skelmersdale, Mickelgate, Thirsk,
I feel like we are two quavering anglo-saxon footmen,
sent off to fight the spectre of Harald Hadrader in the suburbs.

***

Back then, people navigated with the stars,
wove invisible tapestries out of the white dots above.

Now I travel by the light of man made stars
that swing in space and beam me pictures of puppies on demand.
These gigabyte starcharts to lead me to gigs, cakes and video games
but if you stopped me in my tracks and asked me which way north is 

I’d be as lost as a ghost ship in cellophane high streets. 

Magnetic, Geomagnetic, Geographic, and True, 

where, in a town beyond the withered arm of the M1
there is a pale concrete monster made of Starbucks and Apple Stores 

crashing out of the bowels of the earth, 

eyes frying with sky sports packages, 

a thousand magpies circling its tarmac’d shoulders, 

and it is headed for the square, 

where a single touch of its plastic digits will boil up the cobblestones 

and finish what the Normans started, 

a culture flattened into stereotype: FLATTENED, YEAH? FLAT CAPS, YEAH? WHIPPETS, GRAVY, PUDDINGS, NOT BEING VERY BRIGHT, TED HUGHES AND JOHN PRESCOTT IN AN OOMPAH BAND, THATCHER, THATCHER, THATCHER, THATCHER, THATCHER.

I have to get there first, 

for one last new year’s day, 

paddle out on a chunk of driftwood, 

leap into the glacial brine, 

peer with stinging eyes into the dark until I find a star.

Put my hands round its cold twinkles, 

bury it in my pocket, 

take it back to show to all the southern fairies.

So they understand what it’s like to wear a leopard print tank top in January 

and the robes of winter all year. 

So they know what it’s like to see the end of the world and say nowt. 

so they can know about you granddad, 

and the town that I made up.
You’d probably think it was a strange thing to do with my time. 

But I’d just tell you, ’tis a bloody job.