Poetry - 7

My Birmingham The backward glance to where one has been gives the assurance of making progress, without which there can be no future.
Tunnel-backs, Back-to-backs, Terraces and trams. Pseudo-Tudor Smug bow-fronts, Are Brummy Birmingham's Warm and sooty legacy To a dead Edwardian age, That flickers through my memory, Page by wistful page.

The Bull Ring, week-a-day, filled with raucous cries. Of barrow-boys and spivs and gypsy didikais Escapologists and china-from-the-van, "andy carrier!" bags and the red-faced chestnut man. Odours of the fish market, fruit and flowers abound, The smells of roasting spuds and the lavvys 'neath the ground. St Martin's-in-the-Fields, elysian in black gown, Stared with sooted eyes, but not unkindly, down On a human tapestry; The noisy humoured shopper. The spik'ed helmet copper, And the swanking sort of swagger of a Brummy pageantry.

Sunday, in the Ring, was religion's market place; Shouting the odds For their different gods And the hecklers setting the pace. Soap-box dictators, Hot roast potatoes, The Sally-Ann beating their drum. The Mormons and Baptists And Seventh day Adaptists, Cold Winter's night Beginning to bite And making one's fingers all numb. The drunks from the Bull and the old timbered Crown. The police in thick woollen gloves, Sang as they stamped their feet up and down, To the tunes that everyone loved. And when only the wind soughed silently round The paper in gutter and doorway, The old Market Hall, Impressive and tall, Winked across at the Army & Navy.

Gangs, my gang and them, The others from the Grove, The Fisher twins And Hidden dens, A childish treasure trove. The fights, the sights, In Elmdon's fields and Hobs Moats' tiny wood. Of damming streams and sailing dreams That no-one understood. The days seemed longer then, The sun seemed somehow warmer.

Things were realer when They sold a penny ice-cream At the shop on 'Horseshoes' corner.

The trolley-bus with spark'ed arm Grabbed high, live wires And hissed on tyres With tall and stately calm. Red plastic tokens, clutched in sticky hands, Tickets, concertina bent, played in noisy bands. Iron-shuttered school of sooty brick, Tarmac fields a marble's flick Away from factory vista. Cream and green the tiled rooms, 'Click-clack, click-clack' the cracked bell dooms, And cold the iron bannister.

Miss Skinner was the art teacher. Art was my favourite lesson; it was the only subject I was ever even remotely good at and I did so want to impress Miss Skinner. English was incomprehensible, I mean, fancy having rules for just talkin'. Maths and Algebra might just as well have been in Serbo-Croat. Somehow no-one managed to connect education with pleasure, or life, or happiness, at least not inside my head they didn't. Education involved pain and suffering and basilisk eyes that missed nothing; except for Miss Skinner. We could have been happy, Miss Skinner and me.

Minds still closed we were let out - set free! To run and jump and scream and shout and spend our energy. 'Twas then we found As round and round We whirled so crazily, That life was more Than two plus four And one plus one sometimes made three.

Stella was blonde with blue eyes. I gave Stella a jewelled anchor with a lover's knot. It cost the enormous sum of three shillings and I passed it via a third party during class. We never actually spoke, Stella and me, but she played the starring role in all my dreams, especially the wet ones. But, Stella was the unattainable - a year older.

Rowing boats on Small Heath pond, "Come in number nine your time is up", "We haven't got a number nine". "Are you in trouble number six? We don't like them sort of tricks". Giggling girls with boy-friends fond, Scruffy kids with string tied jars Tiddler fishing beneath the stars.
Whilst lovers to the band-stand creep And keeper's brothel slippered feet Slither over fresh mown lawn To catch a love before it's born. Then fast they run past tennis nets Before the sarky-parky narky gets. In Olton Park long summer nights recall The games that gave a fleeting touch, The glances met that meant so much, And games that were no games at all.

The Onion Fair at Aston Cross, The Hippodrome and Alex. The West End dance hall and the Rink (The Brummie's cultural palace). A tram ride to the Lickey Hills,

The Terminus arcade, The slot machines, roundabouts and fizzy lemonade. The Sheldon, the Adelphi, Art-deco Tivoli, Bred darkness dreams of derring-do in (k)nightly chivalry. Tears with Lassie, Flash Gordon fights again!

Abbot fools Costello on a speeding train. Down in the front row peering at the screen, Wondrous flickering images of universal dream; Manchu from the Orient, Tales of Clicky-ba, Villains on vile murder bent, Classic chases in a car. Cinematic living, The vicarious kind, Filling knowledge missing In the spaces of my mind.

I never walked down those marbled steps; I danced, usually with Cyd Charisse or Mitzi Gaynor. I was the narrow-eyed Private Dick of the latest thriller, with one hand pushed inside my jacket resting on my forty-five automatic and ready to blast my way out of danger. Sometimes I would hit those marbled steps with six-guns blazing from both hips - I always shot from the hip, seemed more casual, if you know what I mean.

Energetic country dancing at the Mosely Institute, Dirndl skirts, 'New look' flirts, Folksy looking dancers being cute. Town Hall concerts in the city hall, Big band sounds, we heard them all; Ted Heath, Joe Loss, Delaney on the drums, Ellington and Basie, Ella singing racy, And ogling Lita Roza with my chums.

In the plating shop at the B.S.A., Where men were feared to tread, The turbanned, rollered women worked Who filled us all with dread; Such tales we'd heard, of mystic rites, Of balls being blacked and awful sights Of peni into bottles fed. Then hosepipes littered the Coventry Road, From last night's German raid, The B.S.A. laid starkly low by death's sour-scyth'ed blade. Five hundred souls lie buried there to this very day, And in the silent reach of night, Or so the watchmen say, You can hear the clank Of a capstan crank And the shrilling drills at play. And if you listen very hard you'll hear the peal Of a young man's squeal As the women have him away.

The College of Art, in Margaret Street Refuge, so they said, Of classrooms full of lady nudes - a thought to turn ones head. Alas, thick thighed they were with bored and spotty faces, Bulging tums, tired bums and non-erotic places. But this city was alive, with a strongly pulsing heart, Forged on Trojan anvils into a mighty Midland mart; Vulcan, with Thor's hammer, measured out the beat; Dunlop, Austin, Cadbury, The Mail, the Argus, the Mercury. Machine tools and chains, Castings and cranes, Pounding and pounding To echo in brains Where the pulse of the heart Was so rich and so sweet.

New Street station, Heart of a nation, Had a warm and friendly face. With a roast-potato engine in Stephenson Place Snow Hill was a dark pit, A smoky, clanking hold, But Moor Street seemed to smile a bit And trips to Blackpool sold.

'Blackpool' was standing on the platform of Moor Street Station in the dark and cold of the early, early morning; we'd had to catch the first bus to get there on time and the conductors always teased us about not being awake. On the platform we stamped the cold out of our bodies, still blinking the sleep from our eyes and shivering with anticipation. Blackpool was sea and sand, donkey rides and rock; jaw breaking, teeth rotting rock with the name BLACKPOOL right through it. Without the name it simply wasn't potent magic. Side-shows on the front, Punch & Judy, bands, noise and then, that holy of holies, mecca of meccas, the South Beach Fun Fair with 'IT', the 'thing' with which we terrified each other, hurling dares and double-dares with reckless and malicious glee.

IT was, of course, the Big Dipper with its stomach churning, rock regurgitating plunge into a seemingly bottomless pit. Oh, God! It was marvellous. It terrified us and we loved it. And then the train again. In the darkness, rocking, sleepy, sick and pallid with satiety, happy-sad; sad because things always seemed to be only just starting when we had to leave to catch the last train to catch the last bus home.

Like sequenced lights in mental flights, One thought illumes another, But Brum for me will always be My Mum and Aston Villa.

These memories are from my childhood and teens; I started work at the B.S.A. aged 14. They are of a Birmingham into which I was born and which I recall with much affection. They are my memories and I ask you to forgive my indulgences, but they are all part of what makes me the person I am. I am also reminded that having a good memory is reliant on others having a bad one. "I know of no way of judging the future, but by the past." - Patrick Henry 1775

Cricket – The Untold Story?

I recently found the following message posted on a forum, which provides a fascinating addendum to a glorious day: Cos I'm invariably the driver I don't often get the chance to get wrecked and I don't often have the inclination either, unless I'm in cracking good company and there's no problems about crashing out afterwards.

One such occasion cost me an entire day of my life. By chance I got to know an author named Frederick Covins (The Breaking Sword and TV adapted Battle for Badger's Wood) and his lovely wife Maggie from Worcestershire and before long had been invited to guest for Fred's cavalier "no-stars" cricket team. Fred and Maggie had a particular way of making cricket matches interesting in that they marked the boundary with newly purchased barrels of scrumpy cider and strategically placed pint glasses alongside. The preliminary lunch with all its free-flowing wine over, the match began and as my bowling required a decent run-up I was quickly all-a-sweat and into the cider at the rate of a pint every three or four overs. Batting was wonderful too cos, instead of just the one ball to hit, you could see three or four and I had no inhibitions about dispatching any one of 'em into the nearby cornfields... including five in one over before being given out caught for the sixth... 40 yards into the bloody field. Anyway, no-one bothered too much about this bending of the rules least of all me cos it was another excuse to have a rest nice and close to the cider barrels. However, with the match over the fun was about to begin in the form of a whisky party and I was partnered with a diminutive lawyer from Lincolns Inn Fields by the name of Geoffrey. He's the archetypal Proper Person and I'm yer average bit of scrag-end so it was an unlikely pairing but we did share an affinity for Malt Whiskies and because of that our friendship has lasted 20 years and more. The last thing I clearly remember that Saturday was Geoffrey putting his arm drunkenly around my shoulder and looking at the type-written list of whiskies we'd had to consume one nip at a time. "D'yu know what" he said, "It's been bloody good fun drinking down to the bottom of this lisssst... how's about we drink our way back up to the top...?" And so we did, and I swear on my life, Sunday never existed. I woke up Monday morning on hay bales in a barn and staring up into the eyes of the best looking teenaged blonde I will ever sleep alongside in my life. Turned out she too was a lifelong friend of Fred and had cycled from Lincolnshire for the party en route to America and a career as a front page model for Vogue etc. The irony is, I spent hours alongside her completely oblivious to the fact that she was there, and taking nothing more for the memory of her than a great, big, lingering kiss and the comment "thank God you've woken up alive" whispered into my ears. And all the way home I was thinking. Fancy getting THAT pissed. PS. The author of this story, Tony, was awarded the MBE last year!

Cricket?

Meeting an old friend the other day, he reminded me about Fred's Peripatetic Cricket Team. This, I can assure you, sent my mind cart-wheeling back a few years to the heady days of free spirited encounters with the medical profession and the drunken sots who are now highly respected, leading consultants in their chosen profession.

Let me explain: When Christopher, our eldest son, became a medical student it was proposed that I form a cricket team to play the students. Foolishly I agreed and Fred's Peripatetics (casuals) were born, an odd assortment of plumbers, accountants, lawyers, sculptors, authors, carpenters, lorry drivers, reporters, farm workers, customs & excise investigators and a TV producer. It was agreed that we would all meet at our home, enjoy a cold collation and a few drinks and then proceed to the village hall to play the game. That was the theory. On the basis of the idea that if we got them drunk before we started we would have a better chance of winning - oh folly – I imported a couple of barrels of beer and a couple of barrels of cider. Maggie set out a superb collation of cold joints of meat, huge cheeses, her own home-baked bread, pate, pickles, etc., etc. A meal that has with the passing years attained the status of a legend. The idea about getting the opposition drunk before the match worked superbly, unfortunately my team entered into the spirit of the thing a little too liberally, resulting in all twenty-two players and their camp followers slopping around to the village hall in a single fluid pile. Tossing up to see which team batted first took rather longer than normal as the first three coins were lost and the fourth mysteriously vanished in mid-toss, but was finally found under the umpire's foot, the lifting of which resulted in him falling over. Whilst the batsmen and our wicket keeper padded up, the barrels of beer and cider were arranged beside the pitch for anyone to partake before, during and after the game. It has to be said that we had the only wicket keeper in the history of the game who played throughout with a pint behind each wicket and a runner to keep the glasses replenished. With the first two batsmen positioned upright at the wickets the game commenced. As the bowlers were as drunk as the batsmen any ball that hit the wicket was a pure fluke. Unfortunately Dennis, the opening batsman, was so drunk that two minutes after the ball had gone past him he lifted his bat to play it and promptly fell over. It was going to be a long day. All the players wore their whites except our youngest son, always a rebel, he turned out in black denim and a black Tee shirt with winkle-picker boots! He played as a fielder with a pint in one hand and a fag in the other and whenever a ball came his way he stopped it, most of the time, with his legs. I very much doubt if anyone knew who actually won the game, even the scorers (one now a super-model in New York). In the end we all walked, staggered, were carried or - I hate to admit it - driven back to the house. Back at the ranch things livened up (a euphemism for deteriorated) rapidly, with an Indian student called Dill offering to cook a curry for everyone. Dill, however, was so drunk we had to lash him with ropes to the bacon hooks in the ceiling in order to keep him upright. Swinging freely, but upright, Dill directed Maggie to dig out whatever ingredients he wanted or she could provide and despite the very serious handicaps of all concerned succeeded in producing a very creditable curry for about thirty people. This, of course, was washed down with more beer/cider and whatever anyone could find; wine, whisky etc. Mostly, bodies lay where they fell until the morning, except for the medical students. They decided to go back to Birmingham, but, we heard later, on arriving safely in Birmingham, (God alone knows how), they decided to go down to Cornwall for a swim in the sea. Fortunately for Cornwall they ran into a brick wall, literally. Being law-abiding, upright citizens they abandoned the car and fled. Dennis, their opening batsman, now an eminent consultant anaesthetist, arrived home to find himself locked out. He flung himself at the door and awoke the next morning lying on the door in the hall. Dill, the curry maker, awoke the next morning and went mountain climbing in Wales. Ironically he fell off the mountain and narrowly escaped breaking his back. He too is now an eminent consultant. It's hard to believe after all that, we would want to do it again, but we did, many, many times and always just as memorably. It's amazing, but just writing about those cricket matches left me with a hangover! But thinking about those drunken students and the Peripatetics then led almost inevitably to thinking of them now. The Med students are of course all eminent in their own fields and mostly married with families of their own. But the Peripatetics were all entrepreneurs of one kind or another, individualistic then and individualistic now: running their own businesses, starting ever-newer ventures, answerable to no one except themselves and their families. Most are legitimately entitled to retire and just sit in the sun, but none of them could, would or are. I'm almost certain that if I said "How do you fancy a game…" they'd be on the doorstep, cricket boots in hand before I could add, "…of cricket." And, like their boots, ever so slightly worn and scuffed, but well kept, highly blancoed and ready for play. Even those who have passed on would be looking down, pint in hand of course, and offering ribald comments about their fellow players. One of my greatest joys is in knowing all of these people.