Your article (Chronicle, March 2) recalled the halcyon days of the Talbot Hotel that stood on the High Street until the 1970s and reawakened many memories.  

The good times spent at the bar. The people I met, and of course the legendary jukebox.
Some time ago inspired by memories of the old hostelry, I penned the following poem:

The Talbot Hotel Revisited.

On the wall
Hangs a framed black and white photograph,
I recognise the old faces
Bar room poets and philosophers

High on weed
Envisaging nothing,
The empty beer bottles
Bled like corpses,

Stoned wasted days 
Listening to the same songs over and over;
I read a poem from a scrap of paper
The one about the cops

And the flashing blue lights at midnight,
The record playing on the turntable
Takes me back to that time,
Everything in the photograph

Remains the same
And in the white room where estate agents
Sell old world charm,

And ghosts of the living
Meet the dead
They fill a vase with flowers.

K.J. Barrett,
Stuart Crescent,
Stanmore,
Winchester

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