Three mature students <br />in decrepit Barbour jackets; <br />Judes obscure, each with an <br />implausible route to Oxford. <br />Hogg was twenty tragic stone, <br />Oscar Wilde meets Falstaff: <br />he taxied us in a Simca <br />he could fit inside with difficulty <br />and offered Sloanes 'A lift, my dear? ' <br />I laugh his laugh to this day. <br /> <br />Hanlon was Anglo-Irish, <br />spare as a civil servant, <br />out of his gentle element <br />at his college of trendy horridans. <br />He read all Freud in fourteen days <br />and collected Sixties music long <br />before it came back into fashion, <br />positioning stylus on shellac <br />with laboratory precision. <br />I loved to listen. <br /> <br />All was potential, those three years: <br />Hogg would be huge on television, <br />Charles strike gold on Harley Street <br />and I - of course - would write. <br />Somehow, though, I think we knew <br />nothing would ever come of us. <br /> <br />A decade gone, and still I smile: <br />'Hogg would find that funny... God! <br />Hanlon would like this record'. <br />But did I like them more <br />than they liked me? What is it stops me <br />phoning, writing, E-mailing - and if <br />I ran and caught them <br />would they turn, insouciant, and ask <br />'Did you deserve us? '<br /><br />Richard George<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hogg-and-hanlon-and-me/
