Saturday 12 July

Forever clasping almost anything warm-blooded to her bosom, it won’t take Sanchez long to recover post-op in Miss Jordan’s mountainous retreat, but the warning has been heeded. This trio of intruders, like the baddies in classic puppet show Supersurf II, are winning the crucial battle of the skies and I must at least pretend to acquiesce to their demands. In fact I must DEFINITELY concede UNILATERAL and UNAMBIGUOUS defeat (let’s presume they’re peering over your shoulder, sweet reader). The cotton crunch means I cannot replenish the ranks of my exhausted carriers and today I find only Bilko fit enough to take my message to the crazy Easterners, one assuring them that I will befriend and then betray Byron Badger as requested (or not, should HE be reading this). I turn Bilko’s tiny, bespectacled head towards Sanchez in his quilted shoebox, thermometer in beak, reminding him that any of his clever spiel might spell the end of us all today.

With words dispatched, time is bought and I use it wisely: taking the wagon to Hebden Bridge with Swarthy Erick to camp it up in lush fields with old friends, the newly Francophiled (and bloody tanned) Cameron and Carmona. It is Carmona’s 40th yet she looks better than I’ve ever seen her, straining to control their continental pooch ‘Spirit’ while catching up with roses red & white. So here is yet another option for escape – the invigorating South of France (Cameron enjoys a 5-mile run each morning, pursued by the natives with pitch forks) – yet for all the rain and pain can I really leave Manchester again? If my standard of poetry drops much further I will be run out of town regardless.