Hardeep Singh Kohl: Brotherly love survives stushies and swedges

I love my brothers. I suppose I'm lucky that way. Sure, like any family we have ups and downs but I feel, deep in the core of my being, that me and my brothers will always be able to overcome any emotional obstacle.

But having said that, we are men and we were boys. I had a fight with my wee brother last week. It wasn't pleasant; a big noisy row. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. But rather than let time pass and emotions escalate we met, we spoke and we started to resolve. And while the subject matter of our falling out was very grown-up, the way we fight is pretty much as we always have since childhood. Then as now, testosterone courses through our bodies and there have been times in the past when a wee swedge has been on the cards.

In our house it was quite simple to understand the Darwinism of it. My elder brother Raj is and was physically constructed in a way that resembled a brick-built cludgie. Therefore I wouldn't fight him, rather try to annoy him with my glib comments, rile him with words. And he was long suffering in that department, believe me.

My wee brother was too placid to fight with, or indeed argue with. And he was a very cute child which made it even more difficult to fight with him. There was, of course, the famous Nescafegate incident in 1984. For no good reason I intentionally spilt a cup of coffee all over his homework. For the life of me I can't think why I did such a nihilistic thing. Sanj, studious and academic, was mortified, speechless. Luckily we got over the wet jotters and caffeine-soaked textbooks. He forgave me. It's good to know that 30 years on when the issues are different that we boys are still pretty much the same. Brothers who occasionally have a stushie but who ultimately love each other. And can say sorry.

Vicious circle spins out of control

Life is full of moments, moments that need to be captured. The moment your child takes his or her first step: turn away and you would miss it. The moment of that first kiss: misjudge and you find yourself embarrassed, the girl lost. And that moment with a revolving door when your mind realises that you are a millisecond too late to catch the spinning capsule yet your body has gone on ahead to commit to the manoeuvre. This happened to me on Wednesday.

Lunchtime at the BBC and one of the two revolving doors was closed for maintenance. This meant twice the foot fall of traffic through the elegantly constructed four-capsuled spinning machine. As those leaving for sandwiches exchanged space with those arriving with sandwiches, the revolving door was doing a great deal of revolving. And this big man here found himself stepping towards a spinning door a beat later than he ought to have.

I never thought I would find myself grateful for my robust and oversized Punjabi Glaswegian backside, which cushioned the blow, juddering the door to a sudden stop and momentarily trapping two employees. To say that I had made an arse of the revolving door would be a correct observation in more ways than one.

Should my poetic licence be revoked? It's something and nothing to me

I was up in St Andrews last weekend to take part in the StAnza Poetry Festival. I had a braw time but have to confess that I was rather surprised that there were enough lovers of poetry not only to justify a four-day festival but that the event is growing in popularity every year.

What is it about poetry that seems to divide a room? Suggesting that one might kill a little time between courses during dinner by reciting a couple of stanzas of one's latest poem is greeted with the same derision as if one were to break a couple of stanzas of meaty wind prior to pudding.

People don't like poetry. Correction: people think they don't like poetry. Actually I don't know anyone who doesn't love a wittily constructed limerick or a short, pithy verse of humour. Somehow they don't regard that as poetry.

Poetry is regarded as those self-indulgent, angst-laden lines we laboured to construct during our self-indulgent, angst-laden adolescence. I remember one of my own particularly petulant poems: Another Perfect Sunday. It was a rail against the stasis of the Sabbath, an attack on the fatuous nature of the seventh day and a swipe at the redundancy of Songs Of Praise. It was an appallingly self-absorbed piece of writing. And that was one of my better poems. Unhampered by my own inability to poeticise effectively I continued my turgid travels into my own private grief. No subject was free from my poetic gaze, my rhyming haze. Love; politics; modern farming. I rhymed and reasoned my way through any number of couplets, stanzas and verses. Then one day, like St Paul on his day trip to Damascus, the scales fell from my eyes and I realised what rubbish I had been writing. Since then I have never written a poem. That was until a few weeks back.

Purely coincidentally, before being asked to take part at StAnza, I scribbled down my newest poem (see right). I enjoyed writing it immensely, playing with sounds, syllables and sense. My attempt to apply the perfect economy of words to release the maximum effect of meaning. But ultimately, it's not a great deal better than Another Perfect Sunday. So much changes, yet so much remains the same.