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Best poems of the Month

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The best of Entries (Members & non-Members) submitted over the past month or so.
Short Stories
Hey! Have a look at the Stop & Buy page. A new Historical Romance, based around Clent. ‘Steady Air and Striding’
 AND Lyz’s new book;-
 Ripples & Tapestries
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Containing thoughts by StanthePoet
Here on my workshop bench; all these tools and bits of wood and wire and gobs of glue and polyfilla.
And boxes.
 About a dozen boxes. Some full some empty, lidless.
Some half-empty, contents spewed across the bench; old imperial nuts and bolts and washers.
Springs and little bits of rubber tube. Links of chain.
My dad gave me this lidded tin that holds this jumble of old iron, left over when he’d finished doing things himself.
Things like mending motorbikes.
New valves for old. Old tappets, cotter pins.
Clips that celebrated some past Jubilee; they would have clasped a rubber empire fast.
All imperial stuff no metric European piece amongst them.
Even hand made nails. From where? Perhaps he’d drawn them from old beams and benches of his father’s time.
The time before the wars. The times of sun. The sun that never set.
There’s another little box from then. An old imperial tobacco tin with miniature brass screws inside. Some of them are mouldy.
An old oil can of thinnest shiny tin still smeared with tiny blobs of oil
Extracted by King Faisal’s men to serve the Rolls that Lawrence drove across the desert.
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 Poor Slug! By L.D. Holland
It’s no fun to be a Slug!
With cute antennae but an ugly mug!
I slither along, for what good I do,
I’m only viewed with contempt by you!

It’s no fun to be a Slug!
To compete with every starving bug,
Foraging around; always in the dark,
In gardens’ neat or landscaped park.

It’s no fun to be a Slug!
No one kisses me or gives me a hug!
Ooh! and Arrh! and Yuck! and Grurrr!
Is all I ever seem to hear!

It’s no fun to be a Slug!
I see you with your remedies smug!
I dodge the pellets and your little traps,
With my wits about me, I may live, perhaps!

It’s no fun to be a Slug!
I have to hide in a flower tub,
Or, stick my tum on a cold damp wall!
I can never stand up proud and tall!

It’s no fun to be a Slug!
My rear end worn to a throbbing stub,
As I crawl in pain over grit and sand;
A fugitive in a cruel land!

It’s no fun to be a Slug!
I hope this gives your heart a tug!
I’m so unloved and on the shelf!
So bugger off! I’ll love myself!



Giraffa Camelopardalis  by L.D.Holland
I am
An elegant Giraffe
 You may stare,
and point
or laugh
 At my odd size
my long,
long neck
 My camouflage
Of spots and specks
 If I look a little sad
Or my expression
rather mad!
 It's because
I'm bored in this Zoo
 There's nothing here for me to do.
 In Africa my native home
 On vast plains I was free to roam
 My meal I could find with ease
 Nibbling leaves from tops of trees
 I could run free with my herd
 In Africa I don't look absurd
 To this Zoo where I was sent
 I live out of my environment
 My head aloft among the roofs
 No earth or grass beneath my hooves
 My legs are popping out their sockets
 As I lean down to put my head into a bucket
 To feed on pellets you think a treat
 It's nothing that I like to eat
 I am
An elegant Giraffe
 You may stare
 and point
or laugh
 If you think I am the snooty one
 Well, I do look down on every one!

An Ode to a Hedgehog by L.D. Holland
Betwixt the Hedgehog and the vehicle
 In a collision course,
 It’s sad to say, the Hedgehog,
 Always comes off worse!
His little legs are quick and sure
 Beneath wobbling prickly spikes.
 He can out run the tractor,
 He can dodge the motorbikes,
 But in advance of Dunlop Radials
 He doesn’t have a chance!
He does no harm to any one
 Although he harbours fleas!
 The Hedgehog leads a useful life
 Eating slugs in rotting leaves
He’s as sad a little creature
 As ever you will see,
 Not useful as a scrubbing brush
 A doorstep or a frisbee
So, please be careful when you drive
 And always look ahead
 Don’t leave him by the wayside
 All squashed and flat and dead!
A Poem Called
 Writers Notes  by Steve Jones
Who shall I be?
 A red nosed Dylan Thomas
 In a shed overlooking boathouse and sea;
 Or Larkin, gazing absent minded,
 Through his window at girls attending Oxford University
Or Wordsworth standing on the steps of Dove cottage,
 Or Byron, in Missilonghi dying of Lechery and Leech’s,
 Or Shelley fuelling a funeral pyre on some Italian beach;
 Sockets, where his eyes should be.
Robert Graves, Sassoon, or Wilfred Owen?
 Shall I be as obscene as Verlaine?
 Or as Rude as Rimbaud; or gothic like Baudelaire,
 And suddenly, standing there outside my shed,
 My son! on leave from a tour of Iraq.
 “Dulce et decorum est
 Pro patria mori!” I shout
From within, and with his grin,
 Given in return,
 I agree;
 maybe I am too old to shed my green
 skin.
 This is me,
 Not some literary Chameleon.
A Proustian Moment?  By Stan the Poet
There was this particular episode of reflection that arose one day last week, whilst I was trying to think of a way to make some pieces of re-heated rabbit more palatable. It had been a fine young creature that I had snared four days before and perhaps I should have let it hang longer. My wife, the previous day, had commented that tasty though it was when first cooked with garlic, onion and a little red wine, there was less of the ‘gamey’ flavour that she associated with rabbits she had eaten as a child, and I was forced to agree, whilst commenting that at least it was shot-free and had cost us virtually nothing, though of course we had been feeding it and its fellows on luscious grass and not a few carrot and parsnip and lettuce tops from the garden for two months prior to its sudden yet humane demise.
           Now, faced with re-enervating the bitter aroma of cooked wine and garlic, and the need to provide another evening meal from the two scrawny front legs and disassembled rib cage and the dubious stone like heart, kidney and liver, (for even I could not face the consumption of the lights of the beast), I searched for appropriate stock and finding the packet of ‘bouillon’ empty turned in despair to my wife for inspiration; no not for that inspiration such as would normally be derived from my beloved, but for such that would give life to the sad dead meat in the pan before me.
            ‘Marmite.’ She said.
I reached for the dark squat hand-filling jar and spooned some of the goo into a jug of warm water, stirring vigorously to produce the brownish almost khaki liquid, and began to pour it over the slowly warming coney in its dull bed of pre-cooked gubbinge. The thing was coming to life, and was soon bathed in unctuous juices. I sniffed the rabbit stew for such it now was. It was a nutty, wholesome smell. It would taste good.
           Now came the true moment of reflection. A quarter of the jug of Marmite was left over. I smelled the warm liquid and as I did so I took a sip. The malty taste and the woody smell flashed through my taste buds and nasal sensors and up to my cortex where I straightway felt the warmth of my childhood evening drink; not every evening to be sure, but those on which I had declared myself tired of horlicks and cocoa or my mother had no more of them in the cupboard and it was cold and the kettle had just boiled on the hob and we waited for my father to come home from work along a snow filled road on his ancient motorcycle combo; when I would sit before the fire and sniff the marmite drink and think of the day of spellings and times tables and of the short sharp warmth of snowballs in the street and soaked wellies and coming home to fish and jacket potato and,  
               ‘Maybe daddy will read to you if he gets home early.’
             Then I took another taste of the now cooling marmite drink and it was already less pungent and the visions and the feelings of the child began to fade, so I wrote them down quickly on a nearby pad for soon they would be gone.  But still there was the rabbit.
I AM SORRY BUT I CANNOT STILL LOVE YOU
 by Steve Jones
Time has ruined the body I loved
 Time has taken your intellect
 You are a shell
 Unrecognisable from the girl I once knew
Time has withered our memories
 Time has taken our warmth
 You are bark
 Crumbling in the hands of God
Time has left us unfertile
 Time has dried our skins
 You are parchment
 Dusty in the fog of history
Time has taken our dignity
 Time has sapped your strength
 You are brittle
 Vulnerable and weak
Time will take us both soon
 We will unite in heaven
 As it is in Earth
 But for now
I am sorry but I cannot still love you
 Because it hurts so much
 It hurts so much
 It hurts
I heard you’re unwell by Steve Jones

What do I say to an aged stranger?
 When he says
 “I will be glad when it’s all over”
And when he recalls a recent visit
 By his son, all the way from Australia
 Who said he couldn’t afford another trip.
A son sinks so slowly into dark seas
 Alone like his father,
 And he will live with it,
As long as circumstances permit.
I don’t mind who owns this poem
 As long as it’s taken away.
RICHARD by Dave Shuck.
In the flat next to hers Simeon removes a plug from the hole in the wardrobe wall.
It’s cold out. There’s already traffic and pedestrians. Both are thin, like the air and the sky and the veiled grey cloud that obscures the sun.
Away awhile the gates to the park are freshly open and the uniformed silhouette of their warden dissolves into a mist that comes creeping from the pond.  Dog walkers, hidden, litter the lawns, as do their dogs, unseen, whilst the heads of joggers pass by like targets at the fun fair.
 At the edge of the pond itinerant gulls squabble; jousting for crusts that are sodden, suspended, semi submerged; shaken from cellophane wrappers and paper bags in the last night gloom by crooked shadows cast amber by street lights that look over the wall.
On an invisible island, at its Southern end, nestled between knuckles that anchor their overhanging boughs, the pond’s more experienced residents remain silent, headlessly aloof; awaiting warmer air and the day shift feeders; contemplating fresher food, dreaming of cheese. Two swans glide by, looking superior. Traffic lights blink on the hill as the geese glide in.
Susan sees all of this through the heart that she’s fashioned from the ice on a window pane. She slips off her T shirt, welds her lips and nipples to the frozen glass; shuddering gleefully in the thrill. Outside, down below, the traffic thickens; figures gather at bus stops and the first of the shop keepers, steaming, stamp and clap and rattle open their shutters before carefully unfurling their awnings and shaking off the frost.
A factory bull horn calls; a long way off and in the distance too the faint, rhythmic pounding of the drop forge hammers. The sun, unveiled, appears and begins the melt.
Susan frees herself with warmth and skips to the shower. It’s old and unmistakably English. The curtain that surrounds the bath has yellowed. It’s distorted and under pressure, might well flood but as it is the floor will remain safe and dry. . Susan turns the tap, groans in harmony and laughs at her mimicry as both wait for water. She’s in luck to-day for she’s the first, and there is a steady, rust stained stream. The pipes belly ache as she works quickly and expertly to rid her self of the soap suds from shampoo; when she turns off the tap they shudder and moan, as does Simeon, having  plugged the spy hole with his one good eye.
Sensing this and conscious of his routine; Susan hums as she slips on a thin silk dressing gown. She turns on the radio, plugs in the kettle, drops a tea bag into a rose encrusted, lidless tea pot and shakes cereal into the bowl that matches it. She adds a little milk, squats to devour it and sends Simeon into delirium whilst turning her attention to the news.
She catches the last few words of it before the D.J. cuts in and opens his spot with a self promoting jingle and then tells everybody that to-day’s show will consist of “back to back Joni Mitchell; as it’s her birthday”.  Susan smiles warmly at the opening bars of a song from “Blue” and feels a familiar tingle in her spine as she anticipates the opening line:
“The last time I saw Richard was in Detroit in 68 and he told me
All Romantics meet the same fate some day,
Cynical and drunk and boring someone in a dark café……………….”
      
On Solomon Heights Richard awakens in a bed drenched by light and in a room where a kitten  chases rainbows from a crystal globe all along the white washed walls. Richards’s wife plays husky in the shower but is barely audible beneath its powerful drum as he slips from between the sheets and tip toes to its door, slides it open and steps inside. She’s startled and shrinking, turns and spits out “No Richard, No”.  And then, more softly, apologetically, wearily, “I have practice to-day and I am late”. The voice is threadbare; it’s sad, bewildered tone, unmistakable.
Richard retreats to the bed room opens the French window and steps out onto the balcony in time to see the squadron descending in formation, and finally disappear.
Behind him the radio alarm snaps on and the familiar melody of a Joni Mitchell song comes floating in the light:
She sings;
“Richard you haven’t really changed I said
It’s just that now you are romanticizing some pain that‘s in your head.
You got tombstones in your eyes………………………..

                 Susan dresses quickly, slipping effortlessly into her panties and pulling on her faded denims; she hates tights preferring the feel of rough cloth against her thighs but for warmth puts on thick woolen socks beneath her favourite cowboy boots. Finally she reaches for a plain white T shirt and pulls it on slowly, so’s to treat Simeon to a glimpse of her tits. She then gathers up her Afghan coat from the bed, where it doubles as a Duvet, and dons it with the same disarming simplicity that she employs in conversation.  
Susan’s listening to her internal dialogue;
“Christ she’s in a good mood this morning and Jesus she’s still got a great arse and she has the same sit up and beg tits that were once said to be the best in the bloody universe; tits that Simeon strains to steal a glimpse of daily, and that she affords him at least twice a week because, he’s harmless and crippled and not at all perverted. In fact Simeon’s an aesthete and a poet, a crumpled genius, an unmade bed, imprisoned in a body by Picasso, cursed with the ugly gene.
Shit upon by God.
Richard? Bloody Hell?  Richard!”
Susan’s mood shifts, it darkens, threatens and disturbs, like a twister on a tranquil plain.  “How long has it been since I gave Richard a thought”. She closes the door behind her, preoccupied now and whilst she had expected Simeon to be on the landing in his chariot; carrying empty props for an imaginary milk man, he takes her by surprise.
“Sod off Simeon,” she snaps and sweeps past him onto the stairs; gathering momentum, in tandem with her thoughts, leaving him startled and confused.
The song’s still playing on the radio;
“Richard got married to a figure skater and he bought her a dishwasher
And a coffee percolator
And he sits up late most nights with the T.V. on
And all the house lights turned up bright,”
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             Richard watches his wife leave from the balcony; the wrought iron gates clang shut as he follows her progress until she is lost in a bend and disappears from the hill. Richard showers, pulls on his matching track suit and trainers, ties on a scarf by Giovanni, for effect and moments later selects the Jaguar from the garage and heads for the park.
He switches on the stereo; it’s Joni Mitchell again, an unfamiliar song but one that immediately captures him;
“I was running like a white assed deer
Running to lose the blues
To the innocence in here”
He thinks,” Amazing, how that woman knows my soul”.
In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of Earth
Taken coming back from the moon

Richard drives in through the gates of the park, the mist is clearing, colour is returning to it’s landscape and the Lowry-esque are dotted all around the pond in their winter wear; some with mufflers, some wearing woolen hats and others headscarves; they are  the day shift feeders, the early shift ,delivering breakfast through the bars of railings.  Elevenses will be provided later by younger women, less expertly, alongside their offspring.
The island is bare now and there’s no squabbling for there’s food aplenty; that is excepting amongst the sea gulls who argue for the sake of it.
Richard parks quietly and expertly in an appropriate spot.
The words of the song wash over him.
And you couldn’t see a city
On that marbled bowling ball
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here ---Least of all
for Richard was thinking of Susan and how he had hurt her and he hadn’t thought of Susan in a long, long time.
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  Susan tip toes down the stairs at speed, mindful of others despite her mood and as she passes she hears the familiar sounds of occupants floor by floor; only this time she flees so that none that emerge to greet her may interrupt her pain.
In the street the air is devoured by noise.
Most of the shops are open and the street stalls active with their occupants vying for trade, seeking attention, and amidst all this, along with the cabs and the buses and the busying throng everything merges and blurs dissolving in Susan’s tears.
She  hurries on and tucks tight her chin, casting her eyes downward she sees only feet, big feet, little feet her own feet, the feet of strangers, strangers in boots, strangers in shoes,  some wearing sneakers and one, curiously, sporting flip flops. If she had had the time she would have thought about this and shown concern but her tears burnt and she sought solace in the park.
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Simeon was in shock; sat on the landing in his chariot, clutching milk bottles to his chest.
He was wondering if the moment had come. He thought it might. Now it had.
He listened quietly to a song on the radio; it was coming from Susan’s apartment and it brought him to melancholy:
“Everything comes and goes
Marked by lovers and styles of clothes
Things that you held high and you told yourself were true
Lost or changing as the days come down to you
Constant stranger
You‘re a kind person you’re a cold person too
It’s down to you…”
Susan ran to the park.
The mist was gone.
The warm stealth of the sun had turned the white lawns green.
She passes by a Jaguar parked beneath some trees, a familiar song coming from its radio.
For a moment Richard, Susan and Simian are one.
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In his bedsit Simeon slips deeper into melancholy; It’s sweet and haunting and somehow comforting.
Richard closes his eyes and joins him there.
Susan carries hers to the rail that skirts the pond.

The song says:

In the morning there are lovers in the street
They look so wise
You brush against a stranger and you both apologize
Old friends seem indifferent
You must have brought that on
All bonds are broken down
Love has gone
Written on your spirit this sad song
Love is gone
Panic drowns Susan’s melancholy; she drifts, helpless on its tide; she reaches out for the railings, clinging to them tightly until the waves dissipate and subside; giving way to a gentle breathing which rescues her and carries her to a more familiar place. She turns from the rail at the sound of footfalls to see a sprinter in designer gear race by.
“Richard had an arse as good as that”, she thought and smiled, the panic gone.
Then some instinct called that set her sails for home and she ran fast in fear for Simeon.
She thought of the Prophet:
He threshes you to make you naked
He sifts you to free you from your husks
He grinds you to whiteness
He kneads you to make you pliant
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire.

By the time she reaches Simeons door the litter from paramedic paraphernalia spells dread.
Susan screams and races into the room.
Uniformed strangers form a scrum.
A policeman prevents her progress.
The sound of a radio fills the room;
My analyst told me
That
I was right outta my head
Susan side steps the policeman and shoulders her way to the front of the huddle. Simeon lies broken on a narrow cot, naked but for an oxygen mask. When he sees Susan he raises himself up onto the stub of an elbow and tears the mask from his face with a hand that extends bizarrely from his shoulder.
He smiles weakly at Susan as she accelerates toward him crying,” I love you Simeon, I love you”.
Simeon’s smile broadens into a grin; “Show us your tits then.”
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The sun rises high and sinks down again; whilst the two embrace. Gradually quiet comes to the park. Down in the street the shops close and the shopkeepers and traders pack up and leave. The warden closes the park gates and once gone the kids climb over them and congregate at the band stand drinking beer, courting, acting tough. Their fag ends look like fire flies in the night and the street lamps cast orange across the pond.
The inhabitants of the island settle down.
Richard pours himself a scotch and turns the TV on.
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Predator by L.D. Holland

My name is Hermese-sss!
 I tickle and tease,
 My prey for today,
 My meal, if you please!
 A spinner of silk,
 Of gossamer ilk.
 With Art, I construct
My home to abduct,
The unfortunate mislead,
 Trapped in my web.
 There is no escape,
 My mouth is a gape!
 My venom I inject,
 With superior effect;
 One succulent bite,
 Will suffice tonight,
 Until the next day,
 What joy to relay!
 I hide in a leaf,
 Sleep without grief;
 Till the tension I feel,
 My lifeline doth reel!
 I am out at a dash,
 My living, to cash!
 Be it moth or a fly,
 It is certain to die!
 My nature you will hate!
 But I still fascinate!
My name is Hermese-sss!
 I’m a Spider, if you please!
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Misprint  by L.D. Holland

 The Duck of Edinburgh reined supreme
 His popularity was greater than the Queen.
 Prince Regent - of noble dignity and tact,
 With eloquent and acid wit, gaily he quacked!
Attired in navel dressage, his silver sword held tight.
 The crowd cheered loudly, all waving with delight
 Regally he waddled to his gilt and velvet seat
 The Red carpet puddled, beneath his gingery webbed feet.
Graciously, the Queen gave an over shoulder sneer!
      "He's upstaged me yet again! Get him out of here!"
      "Fear not Ma'am," The Master of Ceremonies knew,
      "There's sage 'n' onion stuffing and orange sauce on our menu!"





Gunship by Stan Bloxham

Maybe I was carrying too much gear, but I was sweating like a pig, breathing like a bitch on heat and pretty much crawling over the last couple of bloke-sized boulders, trying to join the other three guys on the ridge. So I didn’t see it coming. I just heard the hefty roar of it’s motor and felt the blast of it’s rotor that nearly dislodged me, and then it had gone over and we knew it would turn back towards us and I was fumbling for my piece as I saw the rookie a couple of yards ahead of me was already shooting.
Hopeless. Trying to get a line on that monster; the great looming black gunship already now heading straight at us at around 180 an hour. Less than a two second run-in, no time to get a shot but time to see his rockets hanging loose in their pods and his ‘carriage half down like he would take us on a run-in and hanging from his belly that long black hollow pipe pointing dead at me. He came at us dead centre between the two great blocks that crowned the ridge.
And then he swerved up and over and yawed to the right, his rotors almost clipping the side of the mountain as he dived the black attack helicopter down into the cwm and then up again over Glyder Fawr. As he dived we saw him briefly wave and draw up his long black camera pod, and then he’d gone and the rookie turned and grinned at her two young friends and then showed them the hopeless shots she’d tried to get on her mobile as he’d aimed at us between Adam and Eve. She had nothing except a rock and a cloud.
Our excitement and fear were fading quickly. As the silence of the mountains returned we stood and swept our eyes around those near infinite views from the peak of Tryfan. That was why we had sweated and cursed and staggered and fumbled over that grey, treacherous pile of rocks; to look at the vastness, to consider our smallness, yet to recognise our tenacity. And the one guy in his menacing unmarked black gunship had not diminished, but rather enhanced our sense of wonder.  
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Kidderminster Times by Dave Shuck
The old folks’ bungalows encircle the grassy island like a wagon train might, expecting injuns. The moths have its sentinel surrounded too and, intoxicated in its dreamy haze; they flutter and war dance round it like the injuns might. Below ground, there’s a mole at work, and above it sits a moggy with its head cocked looking puzzled. Off yonder, beneath the moon an owl gives toot and swoops across a sky made pink by the Sugar Beet. In the distance an owl hoots back as a bat scythes by, its high pitched squeaking drowned in the cacophony from the rail yard that snuffs out the jigging brogue of the Lowry likes that open up the sluices and disgorge the beet from bulging, frost encrusted freight cars.  Painting pictures in his frozen breath the young boy watches traffic on the Stourport Road. He sees its yellow head lights pinken as it straddles the hump backed bridge, astride the rail, and then disappears its tail lights blinking, and his heart skips a beat as it turns in winking and melts in the veil as he awaits the “g’ nights and g’ byes and seeya tomorras”.  
“Hey Mom”, he’s trying to think of some news, something interesting to say, some reason other than his need for love and a little attention.
“Get to bloody sleep, what time dya call this ya little bugger”.
She’s gone now; somewhere below  in the kitchen maybe; lighting the blue flame gas, filling the kettle, searching the bin for  the last of the bread  then the cabinet for some cheese and a  pickle jar.  By the time she is eating he is at sleep but not at peace for his dreams are recurring, free falling and dragon filled.
One by one; all around the island, the old folks’ bungalows darken excepting those of the insomniacs; they are night-light diffused and yield an eerie glow, fading, in harmony with their occupants. The moon’s in harmony too; in league with melancholy and frost and their crusty veil.  Soon the mist will creep up from the Stour and it will soften the Bull Horn that, at seven, precisely, will awaken the townsfolk and send them mumbling and grumbling and tumbling from their beds and then remind them again shortly afterwards as they grab their sandwiches and their flasks of tea and pack them tightly into their satchels or lunch boxes or leather carrier bags and then by bicycle and bus go down into the factories to weave and pick and creel. But not yet because the town must, firstly, sleep and it won’t do that until the drop forge hammers boom and set the tempo for their dreams, as the night shift arrives and sets off a symphony. The orchestra will play all night and at dawn, vie with the traffic for supremacy, as it multiplies along the Stourport Road fed by tractors and their trailers, filled with beet, and lorries of the Albion pausing to queue at the weighbridge, in the lemon light.
Soon the staff’ bus will return winking, and the front door will click once more, gently so’s not to disturb, and her soft shoe shuffle will crackle and crunch in the morning frost and he will awaken, and before  the sleep is gone from his eyes he will be searching the cul-de-sac for signs of life… He’s up before the sun and ahead of the Bull; that booms out and echoes around the town, once twice and thrice at intervals. The old folk are up and about too; putting out their empties, smiling and sing-song enquiring as to each others health. He will open his bedroom window, shout and wave hello and they will each wave back. He counts them all one by one and expects that they shall not be seeing Harris the undertaker to-day; although he might be wrong. “Morning Mom”. She looks back and smiles and shakes her head. “Mornin Son”, “Don’t be late for school and clean them bloody shoes and make ya gran a cuppa tea”. The staff bus swallows her up and swaggers off to Lowry Land via the Stourport Road. It’s filled to the brim with the early shift from the Midland Red, conductors, conductresses drivers and blighted inspectors, off to man the buses that tour the estates; picking up the creelers and the weavers, the tuners and the pickers, to disgorge them at the factory gates.
At the paper shop the boys are jousting as they sift and sort and bundle news into the gaping mouths of the prints stained canvas bags; Mirrors and Heralds, Guardians and Times, the Hotspur and the Bunty. They clamber aboard their bicycles, mostly Raleighs and the occasional Silver Dawes, and slither off beneath the weight and a flaming sky, shouting to one another “Red Sky in the morning,” and laughing as they race one another in the gathering speed. They follow pathways worn smooth by generations of paper boys racing each other and the school bell.
Back home the house is in darkness and the gas flame from the oven lights up the kitchen, suffused blue. The thin kettle splutters and the crocks on the draining board clunk and clatter and the sugar drifts like the desert sands and the stairs creak and the bedroom door groans and his granny smiles and tousles his hair and says, “Where’s the bloody milk,” and laughs her laugh and the wrinkles explode around her face and light it up with love and she says,
”He’s a good kid on a bike,”
And they both say in chorus, “But he has to get off to ring the bell,”
And they laugh and he fetches the milk and she tugs at his ear and as he makes his way down the stairs she says,
“Have a wash and get that bloody print of your face. And behind your ears too; you can grow bloody taters behind them ears, and put your bloody bike clips on you’ll ruin them bloody trousers and you aint havin any more and get straight ome after school, not up that Bewdley Hill wood and stay away from that bloody canal, you’ll bloody drown in that canal,”
The last few sentences of which are lost as he takes off for school in his Spitfire; looking to shoot down enemy bombers and fighter planes along the way before meeting up with Billy and  making plans for going down the cut after school.
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