‘Why, for putting up with me, of course! For letting me be a part of your club!’ he exclaimed.

It had been a couple of years since Douglas had been out shaking a tin for the Royal British Legion and stumbled across Poetry Club. Encouraged onto the stage by Chandrima, he’d given us ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ to unanimous acclaim (Toby Salt wasn’t there that evening). The next month he was back. This time with a recital of ‘The boy stood on the burning deck’:

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud though childlike form.

His knowledge of poetry didn’t stretch much further than a few learnt-by-rote classics from his schooldays but somehow that didn’t matter at all.

‘There’s really no need to thank us, Douglas. We should be thanking you,’ I reassured him. ‘We’re glad to have you in the club.’

‘That’s very kind of you to say so,’ he said. ‘But I know I must be a disappointment to you all on the poetry front.’

I made a snort of protestation. ‘Come now, Douglas,’ I said. ‘You know as well as I do that Poetry Club isn’t really about the poetry.’

For a moment, I thought he was going to cry. Then, as if pulling himself together, he suddenly stood to attention, saluted and marched off purposefully down the street.

Wednesday April 4th

Apropos of nothing at all, I’ve had the sudden realisation that I don’t really write love poems. Proper love poems, that is. I think it might be good for me as a writer to attempt one of these for next month’s Poetry Club.

Also, as I added up the subs from last night, it occurred to me this evening that we haven’t yet asked Liz whether she’d like to join us on our Poets on the Western Front trip. What an oversight on our part! I think her sunny presence would help to offset all that morbid battlefield gloominess.

Thursday April 5th

It’s a dangerous business going into a bookshop. You step across the threshold, and if you don’t stay focused, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to. I’d only wandered in to get a copy of Wuthering Heights for this month’s book group but I ended up emptying my wallet: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez; The Nation’s Favourite Love Poems; The Soulmate Experience: A Practical Guide to Creating Extraordinary Relationships; a cookbook entitled 101 Things to Do with Quinoa; and The Observer’s Book of Molluscs.