From MIDDLESBROUGH MAGIC SHIP No. 144 circulated 20/9/2019

I received a postcard from pop poet Brian Patten and I met punk poet John Cooper Clarke outside my home, in Saltburn. I also met another writer of poetry, the comic Spike Milligan, who sometimes visited my next-door neighbour on Glenside with his agent, Norma Farnes. However, it was Spike's pal the Prince of Wales (Charles) who sent me a letter of gratitude when I supported his views over climate change, in 1989, when the media and many MPs, Tory and Labour, were calling him "Cuckoo", as to the 0-Zone Layer, in a piece I published in charity mag E.T., at the old Chambers of Commerce in Middlesbrough. The Evening Gazette did a story on this. I'd been in the press before as to Brian, and many verses of mine were later published in the Evening Gazette via Dr Andrew Croft of NOTICEBOARD. The poet Philip Larkin had been concerned as to the loss of our natural surroundings many years before, and rock bands in the early-to-mid 70s sang about pollution. Black Sabbath had 'Hole in the Sky', Deep Purple had 'No No No', Rainbow had 'Run with the Wolf'. Thin Lizzy had 'Mama Nature Said'. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon concept/story album was about madness, not space travel, caused by the environment. 'Lunacy' derived from 'lunar', the moon. Brian Jones was the founder of the Rolling Stones. Their name was taken from an old song called 'Rolling Stone Blues'. He was found dead in his swimming pool. On their psychedelic album Their Satanic Majesties' Request, features the track 'Citadel' with dollar bills flying as flags. Indeed, we've been concreting over the countryside, too busy trying to earn a living or make more money. In Purple's song 'Woman From Tokyo', Ian Gillan sings of the garden he and his girl love, inside her concrete city of lights. Let us not start demolishing parks to build houses and green belts to expand our towns. Surely the earth, the ground, needs to breathe too, and wild animals need places to live and feed. Captain Mark