There are those moments, 

As you get older, 

When you hear about X or Y, 

In that band or that team, 

And maybe they’re leaving, 

Or they’re retiring, 

Or they’ve died, 

And you find yourself thinking 

But they’re new, they’ve only been in the job five minutes. 

How the hell is this possible? 

And others will laugh and ask where you’ve been all these years. 

Brosnan was Bond ages back. 

If we wait for the new Daniel Craig movie any longer, 

He’ll have been at it the best part of two decades, 

Rounding up. 

And it’s a fair enough point, 

You can’t deny you seem to have missed the time passing. 

And perhaps that’s just due to getting on with Life, 

And Stuff, 

And losing what was left of your attention, 

Down the social media plughole. 

But that’s not quite it, I think, 

Because of Brosnan, actually. 

Because I remember the invisible car, 

And I remember the surfing, 

And the CGI, 

And the failure to recognise that  

Austin Powers had happened. 

And I know why these things get stuck in your head as “new”, 

And so did you the moment I mentioned the car. 

We feel we’re due a “do-over”. 

We’re hoping this time it’ll go the way we wanted 

When it started with such promise. 

I’ve one word of caution, though, if you’re thinking that. 

Well, three actually. 

And you know what they are, too: 

“The Force Awakens.” 

Perhaps it’s better that the old stuff still feels new than –  

Well, come on, you know where this is going, don’t you? 



Mike Hickman (@MikeHicWriter) is a writer from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including 2018’s “Not So Funny Now” about Groucho Marx and Erin Fleming. He has recently been published in EllipsisZine, Dwelling Literary, Bandit Fiction, Nymphs, Flash Fiction Magazine, Brown Bag, and Red Fez. His co-written, completed six-part BBC radio sit com remains frustratingly as unproduced as it was the last time he updated this biography. The Christmas Special would have been particularly good.