This one actually does really good cheesy chips.

Another (notorious) Oxford kebab van.

My local kebab van.

Hint: it rhymes with “today”.

A reference to Catullus 5, where Catullus tells his girlfriend that they should enjoy their relationship while they’re still alive, regardless of what old men have to say about it. But old men don’t seem to be that disapproving, at least of traditional relationships. Young love’s not exactly Christian martyrdom, but young lust just might be.

A reference to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. Valentine’s Day’s about halfway through February, so you’ve got plenty of space on either side to write a poem about it. Particularly one which alludes to the most famous love poem ever written.

In Shakespeare’s poem the addressee is compared to a summer’s day. Here, summer becomes late winter, as though the speaker has been ‘given leave’ to rewrite Shakespeare’s defining idea of love (which might not be heterosexual but has been repeatedly read that way) and to imagine alternative landscapes and timeframes for that lust/love, as well as alternative sexualities.

St. Valentine was a Christian martyr. As a Christian he was religiously against the grain: so in a way it’s ironic that his festival celebrates with-the-grain, heterosexual love at the expense of alternative sexualities, especially polyamory.

Batty means crazy, but in Jamaican and modern London slang it also means homosexual. This meaning originally comes from the word ‘botty’ for bottom, but in the next lines I pick up the word ‘bat’ for a fly-by-night, and so by extension someone who sneaks out at night to cheat on their lover with somebody of the same sex.

The poem’s from a queer perspective. The speaker’s lover is being insulted as an arsehole, but the literal meaning of ‘arsehole’ makes this a lustful ode to sodomy.