Tom Wiggins, Letter Carver & Writer

My brother was told today that he's secured an interview to study Postgraduate Medicine at Newcastle University.  Out of a thousand entrants, only two hundred were accepted for interviews.  I don't want to jinx it, but it's some very good news after he worked so hard on his personal statement.  Here's how I congratulated him over text:      A response poem or a silly game of word association?  The half rhyme of Grove/Cole was a  happy coincidence.

without mum, our cousins in Westcliff-On-Sea would just be dad’s sister’s boys; though seen in photographs, nothing more than a passing reference when somebody mentioned Essex. Instead - and because of mum’s influence – our lives were intertwined, a join at the hip  from birth that still stretches  the length of the  M4 corridor. The only difference is that we’ve become  closer:  a reunion proves again the glow,  the warmth – the whatever; the kind of calm familiarity that comes from having grown up together. (the final two lines were taken from Gail Tsukiyama’s The Samurai’s Garden) 18 July 1992: the four cousins together. From left to right: Steven, Paul, James (my brother) and me.

On the fourth day of Christmas,  the Guildhall will give to me, One Jack Bevan, One Jimmy Smith, One Walter Gervers, One Edwin Congreave, and a Yannis Philippakis. For the uninitiated, these five chaps make up Foals, NME Award Winners and floppy-haired indie rock extraordinaires.  Only the great Laura Marling can claim to have crooned more frequently in my Peugeot 206.  To come second only to the great Marling should be celebrated; such is my obsession with female singer-songwriters that if Foals' second album, Total Life Forever hadn't been so damn good, my Top Five Most Played would consist entirely of the fairer sex.  So when I found out that Foals were playing Gloucester Guildhall - a venue that is less than a mile away from where I live - I almost fell over.  My excitement was by no means an isolated incident; the county went berserk when word got around.  When tickets went on sale at the Guildhall box office, they sold out...