LAST weekend I was on at the Freedom Festival in Hull, and what a wonderfully organised and vibrant event it was.

Set in the old streets of the historic port area and featuring loads of diverse bands, poets, dancers — you name it — all washed down with a fine selection of local beers and food from all over the world.

Hull is Britain’s City of Culture for 2017 and has had a vibrant scene for years. It also hosts my favourite venue the Adelphi, basically a hollowed-out terraced house next to a bomb site. It’s been presided over for 30 years by the indefatigable and inspirational Paul “Jacko” Jackson and spawned loads of household names in the independent music scene from the Housemartins to Pulp to Death by Milkfloat, to name but a few. 

What d’you mean, you haven’t heard of Death by Milkfloat? Legends, comrades, legends.

 Best T shirt of that weekend: “Welcome to Hull, European City of Culture 2017. We’re not shit any more.” You never were, Hull, you’re great.

I’ve just been playing bass in Brussels with Contingent, the punk band I joined there in 1979. They still gig occasionally — and incendiarally — and we’re supporting Sham 69 at a celebration of the 20th anniversary of Magasin 4, the alternative venue set up by our late, great guitarist Eric Lemaitre. Belgian beer awaits in vats – and then I’m off with my wife for a week’s holiday in Marseille.

I wanted to use this poem in my column at the actual anniversary of the start of world War I, but so much was going on gig-wise then that I decided to hold it back for the relatively relaxed few weeks between the end of the festival season and the start of my autumn touring, where it could have pride of place. 

It is a true and unusual story — and a poem from the heart.

A Centenary War Poem

For my father, Bill Baine

“What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.”

And so some lines to spike centenary prattle:

These words a sole survivor soldier’s son’s.

My father Bill, born in Victorian England:

The sixth of January, 1899.

His stock, loyal London. Proletarian doff-cap.

Aged seventeen, he went to join the line.

Not in a war to end all wars forever

Just in a ghastly slaughter at the Somme —

A pointless feud, a royal family squabble

Fought by their proxy poor with gun and bomb.

My father saved. Pyrexia, unknown origin.

Front line battalion: he lay sick in bed.

His comrades formed their line, then came the 

whistle

And then the news that every one was dead.

In later life a polished comic poet

No words to us expressed that awful fear

Although we knew such things were not 

forgotten.

He dreamed Sassoon: he wrote Belloc and Lear.

When I was ten he died, but I remember,

Although just once, he’d hinted at the truth.

He put down Henry King and Jabberwocky

And read me Owen’s “Anthem For Doomed Youth”.

“What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.”

And so some lines to spike Gove’s mindless 

prattle:

These words a sole survivor soldier’s son’s.