Patrick Henry Patrick is an intelligent and talented writer who's contributions to thisisUll.com include poetry, reviews and atricles. Patricks contributions are listed below.. No Sections:  5  No Items:  45 Articles,Fiction,Poetry,Reviews,Sports For the index by Section to all Patricks work Contributions click here.

Poetry - A Right Kettle to Fix By Patrick Henry
	Protest at street demos, taken as free right, Frames you on mad fringes in duffle coats. Cordons of order close in the nation's thought, That terror looms more than fresh climates we need. Cops numberless strike, then hide in shadows. A newsvendor is hit by no sheer chance, But a target for their control at points of info. Read more...

Poetry - Soldier, Farewell By Patrick Henry
	Under the flag he chose to serve, Marching no more down roads aflame, The soldier fallen lies held in where the pall Bearers pass the ranks for his last time. Few words will tell or heal the loss. Bugle notes stand for the unspoken thought. Those nearest share the deepest hurt. Read more...

Poetry - Fall of a House in Ulster By Patrick Henry
	To go across the sea to Northern Ireland, Could mean curtains for you, closing your last day. Thinking to see sunset ablaze along The Lagan, It's your house torched by those wanting you out of the way. Memory of tense times recent in The Troubles, Jogs at sight of boarded windows, from where some had flown, Read more...

Poetry - The Speaker of The Commons By Patrick Henry
	Mick Martyr, a Clyde worker, worth his metal, Falls on his sword, they carry for State Opening. Rows rage on MPs, on two home loans, two jags, Two lav. seats, two blue films, two mistresses, To show the masses, who now their master is; Two turtle-doves, to bill and coo, in their cote, To house the ducks, spare no expense; to float Read more...

Poetry - The Right to Rule By Patrick Henry
	The Bother Boys come blowing in, By stealth through the back door. Euro Polls gave them the nod. Round corners lurk dozens more. Garbed like bouncers, they’re in fact Gatecrashers, sneaking backwards in, Thought a loony fringe safely outside; Read more...

Poetry - Last Sunday Morning By Patrick Henry
	Saturday night went. We'd worked all day at factory, farm or store. Next, a quick bath; tea of stew or kippers; then off To the pictures where Bogart guns down rich bad guys; Or dance at The Palais. Cool girls taunting. Hot bands swing. Church bells toll the doom of Sunday morning. Pubs will shut at two. Back home, roast beef hits the plate. Read more...

Poetry - The Power Switch By Patrick Henry
	"What's on the box tonight?" No hopes hold high. From The News at tea-time, I switch off to digest. The threats and lunacies chalked up today. A Martian landing here would take this planet for A mental asylum for the damaged Universe: This screen its monitor, or CCTV for a crime scene; Where slick producers, robbed of their senses, Read more...

Poetry - Most People Poems Fail By Patrick Henry For Adrian Mitchell, 1932-2008
	That kind of writing ignores most people, Who will say 'to hell with it', one voice warned, When times struck crisis through the 'Sixties: Classes and ages splitting: defence against revolt. Songs and protests over Rights of the outsiders threatened, Sparked gulfs between safe Read more...

Poetry - Paris Is Burning By Patrick Henry
	In '68, students seized Paris to man the barricade; Copied the '89 Revolution, when Jacobins stormed The Bastille; guillotined the ruling class to carve a state Into The Republic, which each new generation remade. In film, The Cars That Ate Paris, named autos the enemy. Now 2000 and odd, past boulevards, Read more...

Poetry - Ashes To Ashes By Patrick Henry
	Down-under the dodgy digger is the flash tool to fool us all: Over here, the cobber to ditch the blather and strike the flaming ball, No wet Pom could hit for straight six, or toss-up a wrong-'un to skittle a side; Pull all POM sheilas hard-up for it: ten top thin models lined up in a bed; Read more...

Poetry - The Battle of Cable Street 4th Oct 1936 - 4th Oct 2006 By Patrick Henry
	A lifetime since when that ring of steel clashed down these streets. Boot-heels struck cobbles. Bin-lids for shields buckled in defence To batons, rocks, banner-shafts. Ears cocked to hear drum-rolls and fast heart-beats. Read more...

Fiction - 100 Words Competition - Look Big In Ongar By Patrick Henry

	George Osborne, brilliant young fiction-writer, distant relative of the late, explosive dramatist, creates three archetypes of contemporary anti-heroes: Rebellious John Major, absconded from circus tight-rope acts, become accountant, then, incredibly, Foreign Secretary, Chancellor, and Master-Gourmet of the Hot-Curry-House; William Hague, five-foot boy-wonder Read more...

Fiction - 100 Words Competition - Problems From Home-Drinking By Patrick Henry

	On foot loaded in wine-empties, bottle-bank replaced by a building-site; I tipped into a wheeler-bin nearby. A woman emerged screeching I'd get her children taken into care: the bin-load proving her an alcoholic, unfit custodian. I fled next-door, a vet's surgery; a leashed pit-bull menacing; its contemptuous owner asking where was my ailing pet. My rock-python too sick to travel, Read more...

Fiction - 100 Words Competition - The Animal Empire Strikes Back By Patrick Henry

	From a small boat we looked around river-creeks for fresh-water crocodiles. A wealthy German had one brought aboard to sit on his knee; jaw bound with rope by the Aborigine crew; his glamorous wife photographing. I criticised them all. The Abos protested they never hunted or ate these creatures, as many people do; now releasing this victim. I said they had Read more...

Fiction - 100 Words Competition - Admission Cost By Patrick Henry

	I hitched to The Edinburgh Festival, giving poetry-readings, arriving daybreak, sleepless, my literary hostess, Nancy, American, Gertrude Stein-monologuist, whirling me off to see The Festival Director, John Drummond; complaining about publicity, calling me as witness, newly arrived and bewildered. Wearily I agreed. Nancy's salon lacked audience. One performance, Read more...

Poetry - Loafer Party Conference By Patrick Henry
	The Loafer Party Conference meets at Muckcluster Railway Station: No more dodgems or donkey-rides at some seaside soft option. Rail buffet sandwiches curl sadly, or else in contempt the way Prescott's lips snarl like a pit-bull; The Guardian of his Party, Prowling roofs nightly, scaring Read more...

Poetry - The Deciding Test By Patrick Henry
	It's not cricket, old boy; never like this among The Members at Lords. We played the game, not sledging and slanging these bad words. An Aussi Umpire gruff as a bear: a stern Paki, each call each unfair. War is diplomacy by another means. Read more...

Poetry - The Deciding Test By Patrick Henry
	It's not cricket, old boy; never like this among The Members at Lords. We played the game, not sledging and slanging these bad words. An Aussi Umpire gruff as a bear: a stern Paki, each call each unfair. War is diplomacy by another means. Read more...

Fiction - 100 Words Competition - Debit Column By Patrick Henry

	Raymond, abrasively-witty, biography-reviewing journalist, worked during endless pub-going; volumes under arm; notes mental or beer-mat-jottings; from Five AM. around Smithfield Market, through mid-day Fleet Street, Soho; to evening Chelsea, exhausting his trail home. Early hours meant snatched sleep and eating; columns grittily-written: cold turkey! Five A.M. his taxi Read more...

Poetry - Terminal Crisis By Patrick Henry
	Icarus on wax wings crashed failing to reach the sun. Quest for the sun in sure, high-speed flying, carries on For those from grey islands who long for Tenerife: Long since Icarus, the journey easy, safe and brief, Planes go faster, but airport queues grow long and slow. Soon round the world in one Read more...

Poetry - Novel Moves to Montmartre By Patrick Henry
	Place Cliché high on city squalor reeks of Henry Miller or Henri Toulouse- Lautrec, And one character here come-lately. I invent myself in a cheap attic Down Rue Barbes, Street of Beards, at times assuming the guise Read more...

Poetry - Let's Blow Up America By Patrick Henry
	Stan Freeberg writes the scenario, Tom Lehrer does the songs, "Let's Blow Up America", best musical since Springtime for Hitler won the gongs, When Jews of Manhattan broke a leg to get hot tickets to catch Read more...

Poetry - The Final Scapegoat By Patrick Henry
	From dope-peddling terrorist dens where the late Taliban Blew up everything they hated out of all proportion, Another lark to test lads in the closed season can be The Afghan's ancient sport of Buzzkashi. Misheard as 'Bush-catchy' it is unpopular in Washington, Where George dreads another presidential assassination. But this lines up teams of Read more...

Reviews, Theatre - Northern Broadsides Company at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough - Wars of The Roses by Patrick Henry
	Battles depicted by semaphoric flag-wielding and huge rattling drums, vigorous balletics, sack-barrows deployed as steeds or track-turning tanks; speeches characterised by robust Northern or Midlands accents, and their inherent ironies and wiliness; intrigues concocted rapidly and sadistically, mirroring statecraft strategy related to our day now. Such are the best Read more...

Poetry - Feast of Violence (At Scarborough in The Fall) By Patrick Henry
	Time of mist and pumpkin-lamps Keats might call fall of the year. Ten days and two centuries back, twenty-first October, Five thousand sailors, one called Nelson, died at Trafalgar. Feasts of violence make dates upon the calendar. Stick a pointed hat on an excited child. Black-paint-daub their face, Read more...

Poetry - Test of Character By Patrick Henry
	From Afghanistan comes word of fair play and decency From the visiting President of the MCC, That the Jihad desperadoes and Kamikaze ghouls Have given way to cricket-mad flannelled-fools. For the influx of this dose of common-sense. Our wise Wisden man says Read more...

Poetry - The Looking-Glass War By Patrick Henry
	Fort Polk could steal headlines from Baghdad and Guantanamo. A camp down in Dixie will become heroic as The Alamo. It rehearses scenarios in line for Middle-Eastern war GIs are tested out by all-comers down there. Amputee veterans of Pearl Harbour, Korea and Vietnam Replay their parts of war Read more...

Poetry - The Underdogs Of War-Games By Patrick Henry
	8 groups in The World Cup, imagine the worst in each to win Through to The Quarters, The Semis, or The Final Game. From defence to attack they might spring up surprising. What have these minnow nations got going for them? Talk of red cards, Paraguay once lost five million men In their big 3-Nations War, facing Read more...

Poetry - Aliens Make Great Movies By Patrick Henry
	Great old Science-Fiction films are not released today, When metallic strangers taller than lone cowboys landed to say Their masters ruled distant weird worlds now at galactic war With this frail Earth unless we wise up to the danger. The Capital of Science-Fiction must be The United States. All those terms together add up Read more...

Poetry - Persona Ingrata By Patrick Henry
	From years overshadowed by smart authors, I woke in horror to find Change gripped me bleak as Kafka's insect or Dr Jekyll's fiend. Once on the skids in Paris, fleas that clung round my body I flicked at Sarte's photo in a posh café. Read more...

Poetry - The Cost of Labour By Patrick Henry
	No fool, Britannia, never ever slaves since times They fought for The Truck Acts, The Workers' Vote, the Right for Unions. Loyal as Coronation mugs, some think Magna Carta put Civil Rights our way: That job-form for barons who started higher up the tree. They imagine that The Civil War Read more...

Poetry - The Rickshaw Termination By Patrick Henry
	In Delhi ten years back, time stood still. Cycles flourished. Cattle grazed the streets. From morning mist temples loomed vast as heads of gods, Carved in curves of sun and moon. The sky hot, ethereal. In dawn's half-light a centaur-shape enters the bare street, Stealthy as a cat, almost silent but Read more...

Reviews, Films - The Road to Guantanamo, Channel 4, Thursday 9th March 06 By Patrick Henry
	Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross's work is hardly like anything else ever shown on television, which makes it remarkable and welcome, though not to The New Statesman's reviewer who complains of its deficiencies, TV-wise, and that it fails to inform about the political attitudes of the protagonists or the real nature of Camp X-Ray and as a road movie lacks amusement. Read more...

Poetry - Reality Shows By Patrick Henry
	China is making uniforms for the British Army. In Aldershot golf clPubs old Colonels go barmy. Our image and defences gravely threatened. The Chinks will stitch us up when they lose the thread-end. Our regiments to look like aliens in the desert war, And U.S allies to hit them with friendly fire. When Royal Marines' Read more...

Poetry - Last No'ell At Scarborough By Patrick Henry
	Christmas day comes. I've seen a wilder funeral. Pubs open their eyes, their doors in morning mist a while; Pull a free pint if they should remember you. Then lunchtime's a bad moment if you are a turkey, A vegetarian or a republican amid the carnage. It gets no better for anyone by the TV stage. The Monarch says today Read more...

Poetry - Showdown At Flamingo-Land By Patrick Henry
	Flamingo-Land is sheer paradise captured in a name. Exquisite birds turn the trees to fiery flame, Perching there on a rosy-fingered dawn, Or at dusk stretching daylight to sublime perfection. In the wildlife park creatures are good as kept by Noah; Safe from storm, flood and savagery Read more...

Poetry - Politics On The Dance-floor By Patrick Henry
	Cuba's dangerous crocodile-shape looms long and slim As a laid girl, a good cigar, or Castro's red regime. A pianist plays Blues out of his back-street door: An instrument from Chicago that'll send no more; Nor glitzy Cadillac cabs that take you for a ride For five bucks anywhere and girls Read more...

Poetry - Rosa Lee Parks By Patrick Henry
	Rosa Lee Parks, calm Rosa Lee, Cotton seamstress of Montgomery, Caught the wrong bus at the right time to be Driven into race history. Mr White Guy craved her bus seat place, But she sat tight on her black ass. Read more...

Poetry - Shadow on the Porch By Patrick Henry
	A figure sitting on the front porch sets a portrait Of the Deep South vitally as a sweet song At Sundown: Old Rocking Chair to Skylark and Stardust blends the mood. The one jarring note being this one's not sleeping but stone dead. Twelve days since wild Katrina stormed in this house, Read more...

Poetry - The Wolfgang Apology By Patrick Henry
	They're sorry about the 80 year-old at Brighton Bounced out for heckling Blair's happy-clappy party line. They're sorry a senile Kraut refugee war protestor butted in, When "Don't mention the war for Christ's sake" was the order given. Read more...

Reviews, Theatre - Sep 20 - 25th - The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Northern Broadsides Company at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough by Patrick Henry
	The scandal school of the title locates itself in tea-parties gathering mostly at the home of Lady Sneerwell, who has a voracious addiction to gossip amid the Darjeeling and cream cakes passed around her close acquaintances equally hooked on rumour-peddling. Suspectedly, no-one has any friends in this circle or in upper-class society at Read more...

Poetry - High Noon in Washington By Patrick Henry
	High Noon strikes in Washington where George W. rules okay, Top man in the Wild West where freedom comes by gun law. From Tombstone to Dallas they'll shoot you if you cross The wrong way their highway not their way, And fry you like burgers in the electric chair. Read more...

Poetry - Port of Call By Patrick Henry
	Sailor home from the sea, soldier back from the war, Who are you? This has never been told To those meant to be nearest, or even yourself Through wild years playing your part round the world. Tinker, rover, soldier, sailor: all set deep in your Northern race; Read more...

Poetry - The Cup That Cheers By Patrick Henry
	The reds, the underdog team they were up For the Final night of the Europe Cup. We wished them the best backing Liverpool, The rough old port where hope was born, Where you'll find no trees nor scented breeze, Nor fields of waving corn; Read more...

Poetry - Red Fox Blues By Patrick Henry
	I'm blue, but not true blue that way Of the high mighty rich who took my town away. Blue sounds of protest stand for those in need to say Light from the hard left should shine back some sweet day Lady Day sang the blues are nothing but a cold grey day, Read more...

Reviews, Theatre - June 6-11th - The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare and Sweet William by Alan Plater. Northern Broadsides Company at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough by Patrick Henry
	These two works played in a week of repertory constitute essentially company productions, without star actors nor prominent leading characters, giving all-round strength to the enterprise, but also some weaknesses. It is absorbing to watch how the actors from the classic comedy are deployed in the cast of the new Plater piece. Read more...

Articles - A Seat In The House By Patrick Henry

	Albert Stubbs worked as a printer on Hull's Daily Mail. His brother Frank ran a grocer's shop in Hessle Road, went bankrupt, became a tally-clerk on the docks, fell ill and died of heart failure. His widow Gert remarried to a sergeant-major in the East Yorkshire Read more...

Articles - Words to Uncle Sam By Patrick Henry

	An Englishman in America can meet very mixed kinds of reception. Cultural differences he presents might arouse fascination or reverence from the natives, but acceptance that he holds superiority in Anglo-Saxon language and civilised values can be Read more...

Articles - Art Views at the Seaside By Patrick Henry

	Scarborough has an oddly uneven relation to art: an historic, refined place of coastal vistas would be expected to spawn a wealth of painters creating here, but it seldom occurred. Lord Frederick Leighton, outstanding son of the town, became President of the Royal Academy Read more...

Poetry - The Reading Will Start Shortly By Patrick Henry
	Catching planes briskly as a smart executive Crossing the globe to arms talks or trade tariffs, I land at many ports to collect ripe pub stories, Or to read poems in suspicious small back rooms. Who are these figures in the gloom who cough or clap? Read more...

Poetry - Voice at the Edge By Patrick Henry
	News reports twenty-four tongues die out each year. Every fifteen days one might say goodbye In its own words, never spoken beyond Scant enclaves; pronounced on its dying day By a handful of landless outcasts In wild tracts of Asia hard to find Read more...

Poetry - Journeyman By Patrick Henry
	His learning class sank down the pits so deep as hell Anyone expects from graft being a penance in the earth To cut out coal black as mortal sin which burns To fire steam force and make that world power work. He lit out from there to war abroad: the tender flame Of raw youth blown out close by where his chance survived.. Read more...

Articles - Hull, Hell And Incidents, Deliver Us. By Patrick Henry

	My arrival in Scarborough at the age of zero happened only months after my folks moved here from the Hull area, so that their voices and views impressed me stronger than those in my birthplace. Mother said Hullers look down or up to nobody, but Scarborians look always over their shoulder jealous of anyone having more than deserved, or more than grabbed by themselves. Read more...

Sports Football - The Scarborough Warning By Patrick Henry

Scarborough F.C. are at home to mighty Chelsea in the 4th round of the FA. Cup on Saturday, January 24th. Before anybody laughs at the idea of these minnows reaching victory, it should be remembered that we knocked out Chelsea from the League Cup on our ground in 1989. Then Chelsea had stood top of the whole League, before the Premiership existed, and Scarborough played in Division Four a brief period. Read more...

Articles - The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang By Patrick Henry
	The Hole-in-the-Wall is a pub found in Scarborough's Vernon Road, a steep hill linking the town centre almost to the sea-front and the Spa, and in the lower half of the street is almost the only building but for the quaint Rotunda museum. Otherwise only blank tall walls rise, holding up gardens and terrace-housing high beyond. Read more...