Looking out the window above where I am writing there is a sheet of grey sky on this August day in 2017. Thank goodness then for memories of other summers.

Having just moved to Ipswich, Suffolk from the USA in 1967, I was an all-American boy more in tune with the Beach Boys and a 13 year old’s inherited Nebraskan patriotism than the hippie movement of San Francisco.

I have written elsewhere about this, but my record collection then was essentially two greatest hits albums by The Four Tops and Wilson Pickett. It wasn’t until later in the year after alt-left thugs [as Trump today would no doubt ascribe them] at my secondary school had turned my head from supporting the Vietnam war and God that I purchased Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced and life changed for me forever, even if English summers have from then to this day continued to be variable.

I am prompted to this brief reminiscence having posted my poem about Kentucky and the KKK two days ago. Taken from its initial collection Years, I thought it timely to also share another poem Purple Haze from it that celebrates the year 1967 as we now – well, some of us – celebrate the 50th anniversary of that seminal if ultimately doomed, in terms of realising all its aspirations, Summer of Love.