Youth
Not far from Eltham Palace,
a Tudor pile with architectural graces,
when in primary school they wanted to send my friend,
whose Dad was a missionary in the South Seas--
the Gilbert and Ellis islands, I believe--
to Coventry,
I said it was a dirty, rotten swizz,
to which they replied, in local patois, "hard cheese."
Where outside school gates eagle-eyed nosey parkers recorded
anything illegally eaten in the street--
Zooms, crisps with or without a blue packet of salt, Trebor Mints, Refreshers, Maltezers--
mothers sometimes waited with old-fashioned babies in proper prams, with springs,
but most of us would walk the mile to the bus stop,
sweet-less, sweating and full of ourselves,
but carefully giving the busybodies no cause to take out
their best Basildon Bond sheets and write,
with fountain pens and copperplate hands,
headmaster-bound quite severe notes.
New gym kit I remember liking, also the smell of leather satchels,
elastoplasts too,
and prize books given out by the Congregationalist ministers,
all of whom praised straight bats.
We were instructed to dubbin our boots,
to keep our socks pulled up,
to be ready for emergencies
to help old ladies across streets.
Jagger's brother got all of this,
but I doubt it reached Mick.
With plastic macs and cold blue knees we often waited,
rain soaking our shoes through.
Here's a trick I remember.
Put the coppers in and dial mother.
Ring a designated number of times;
she deliberately doesn't answer.
Press button B.
Get your money back.
Mum's the word.
Our hopes were often invested in buses,
which never came.
While waiting you could put the saved pennies in the slot in the window of the model store
and run the train
twice around the shop window.
We saved our pennies for lollies,
and talked of heavenly glimpses,
and shocking hints of bra,
of football victory and sausages,
team teas in splintery pavilions
of jelly and blancmange,
which I'm now find
is an Arab dish, <x-tad-bigger>mehallabiyyah.
Youth, people say, is wasted on the young.
It's certainly an odd kind of fun.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon</x-tad-bigger>
