Well this is not the story I thought I would be writing. I wrote on the train on the way home today quite extensively, and when I arrived home I continued with a poem entitled ‘home again’. I left the laptop and went downstairs to have supper and I have just returned to find the computer installing updates. In the past it has always auto-saved my work, but it did not do that today. So much of the writing on the train, and the quite beautiful poem, have gone. The only thing I can remember about the poem is that is contained a dog’s arsehole and I felt sick from eating too much Turkish delight when I got home.

So one thing to say tonight is always save your work before leaving the computer. Probably the only thing to say. To give it the full impact.

Always save your work before leaving your computer to have tea.

Losing work is strange. It makes me feel unmanned. It draws attention to the ephemeral nature of the digital world. And I was so pleased with myself for writing on the train. It was a first. The first time I have written in any way extensively away from home. I have this feeling that everything is lost, that somehow those lost words are the best words I have ever written and I will never write any that are as good. I need to get over this quickly. To have faith in these replacement words. I do. I do. I do.

The poem, as I said, was entitled home again and I will write another poem with same title now:

home again

I remember when words were precious,

when each one had a weight and a value

and they said something important.

I have been away for two nights, three days,

in Cornwall. I was dancing with Rupert and Anna,

and meditating. I stayed with Rachael and Matt,

their aged offspring, travelling with them

in the back of the car, creeping through

their room to use the loo, being fed by them.

Of course we danced, and talked and walked

about. They met me at the station and they hugged me

goodbye. It was a good time, though I was tired last night,

but today I have been full of energy and writing.

The last thing I saw before boarding the train in St Austell

was a poster for The Lost Gardens of Heligan and a picture

of an old door in an old ivy clad wall.

This poem is me. A childhood reinvented and made good.

Nothing is ever lost, nothing is ever fixed, each moment

is a reinvention, a creation. This poem is not that poem

it is the poem.