REMOTE
DISTANT
COMPLEX
STORMY
EXPOSED
FLARE
BLOWOUT

Polaroid photos and colour prints of first generation North Sea oil and gas installations built during the 1970s and 1980s oil boom. Taken by my late-father, Allan John Stow, an instrument engineer from Hull and one of the first offshore oil men known as the North Sea Tigers.

Photos still smell of his tobacco, are tea stained or blotched with ink, and edged with the ghost of his thumb.

I wait by the net curtain

See a taxi arrive under the street lamp

Rush downstairs

You enter our front door looking wild, rough, shattered

And sit in your chair under a dark sea cloud