Exciting arts news from the midlands, where Obiter’s favourite solicitor poet performed poetry for children last month at the apparently famed Farmers Market at Hartington in Derbyshire. Ian Henery, managing partner of Willenhall firm Ian Henery & Co, has performed street theatre and poetry around the country for the past 20 years, but this event is a double first - the first time he has performed for farmers and, more importantly, the first time he’s been paid. Gazette readers have in the past had the pleasure of reading a little of Mr Henery’s work and here we reproduce ‘Marilyn the Mermaid’, dare we say one of the more off-the-wall contributions we have received from readers over the years.

Ian Henery: a fishy tale

People often ask where the magic has gone in the world. How can Mother Nature give fairies, elves and mer-people when our furnaces belch filth into the sky and we shamelessly tip pollution into the seas killing dolphins and seals? No life, love or happiness could ever survive.
Marilyn the Mermaid
As sweet as can be;

Playing in the waves

And living in the sea


A friend to dolphins,

Beautiful seals and whales too

Together, just living a life

In the peaceful ocean blue


Pollution, death and misery,

Products of a superior race;

Hell-bent on destruction,

Pumping into the sea its waste


Marilyn the Mermaid,

Crucified on the tuna nets

Blown apart by fishermen

And condemned a pest.