My Terrance Dicks Poem

 

My Terrance Dicks Poem

I took a spare copy

of Planet of the Spiders

for Terrance to sign

for my friend who was

too ill that day

to come to the pub.

I watched the hand of the man

who’d typed almost every book

of my childhood.

His quashed red fingers

pressing down hard

in black felt tip,

writing as he sat

with a great big plate

of meat pie and potatoes,

swimming with gravy

in the tiled and noisy cavern of

a Manchester pub.

The grand old man just beamed at me

when I told him that anything worthwhile

in the whole Show was invented

by him and his mates

between 1969 and 1983.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said excitedly.

‘And they keep on

bringing all the

buggering things back!’