This is my anniversary poem, written many years ago.

Staff beckon us over during the tea break

A pleasant hotel outside Bath, ample parking.
The co-trainer and I hired hands, delivering
a course we didn’t write. A tight schedule.

Two compulsory days on soft skills
for the Revenue or the MOD.

Participants stand, munch biscuits.
The deputy manager half-whispers.
Advises us not to let people go unprepared

into their bedrooms, be shocked by
these images, the live reports.

It is early September, still warm.
When at 5:30 we say there’s bad news,
most think the Queen Mother has died.