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VI. Grammar School

OLD FRIENDS

When you went to the grammar-school all your old
friends disappeared. Never saw Tommy Morris
again, nor Teddy Cunningham. No one told
you you could still find them out. Perhaps they turned
up at church just as I did, but some blindness
stopped me from seeing them. At school you learned
all those different things, dressed in your special
clothes, your blazer with shield, your cap with silver
badge, a mitre in silver, sort of medal
marking you out, but of all its fine glitter
neither Tommy nor Teddy noticed a ray.
From the earth they'd vanished completely away.

THE PHOTOGRAPH

When I saw the new photograph of me in
all my new grammar-school clothes, I found it strange.
Didn't look like me, that boy: had a funny grin
sideways and short trousers so creased, you could see
them as two liners' bows. Photos seem to change
you 'cause a mirror is wrong, can never be
the real you, except when you have two. I'd been
shocked just the same seeing myself when passing
some shop where there were two — you'd think you had seen
someone else, yet it was no use you staring
'cause that's how others saw you. There was no doubt
you were in a world you knew little about.

THE SCHOOL PHOTOGRAPH

I was there on the bottom row of the school
photograph, knees crossed, down on the grass, smiling
with my eyes screwed up (sunlight too bright). The rule
was that the first forms were lowest, the big girls
and the big boys of the fifth at the top and the staff sitting
in the middle with the prefects. With curls
and straight hair and fat faces and thin, a bead
belt all laid out, unfastened from the lessons
we were happy to miss. But though we'd been freed,
some were still frowning, or blurred. All my cousins
were there too. Couldn't see an ordinary
picture, later. Too like a shooting-gallery.

WORKING HARD

Mammy would tell me to keep working
hard. All the teachers were paid to keep telling
you that too. If they didn't, they'd be shirking
some boys said, taking no notice. To be paid
then would make you a sham. All your good spelling
would in the end fill your pockets. Those who played
about couldn't be greedy at least. Then, too,
nobody dared tell us about the breakdown
that my uncle had. You mustn't overdo
work, Mammy said, or else one day, in your gown
and your mortar-board, you'd be found in the snow
running wildly alone on top of Bleaklow.

KNOWING VOICES

Learning some things was easy. Everyone's voice
specially was different. Each person in the class —
you could tell who it was at once. Was no choice.
That was Bill Barlow with his slow sing-song tone;
that was Steve. always ready to laugh. To pass
well in the Latin exam, though, you would moan
going over the prepositions, to make
sure that you knew them; in history, the dates;
in geography, crops. At any mistake
you had to do it again. But your classmates,
even anyone strange who spoke to us,
we knew all these at once without any fuss.

THE SCHOOL TIME-TABLE

It was funny how time-tables got feelings
stuck to them. Making them neat, doing different
colours, one for each subject, putting in nice rings
round all the best, it looked good in your scribbler,
every day very clear, so convenient,
specially with books I'd marked with the same colour.
There were teachers' initials and the homework
times for giving out, taking in, giving
back. So starting the year, no one would shirk
having to do it all. When you'd done living
through a month, though, your heart would go into crunch
to see three dismal periods after lunch.

THE WOOD-GRAIN ON THE DESK

On my desk you could see patterns in the wood-
grain. Could be waves on a shore spreading out
over sand, squeezing inside a gully, or could
be like the contours in the geography
lesson. Here was a mountain: from a lookout
high in the desert peak you'd see a wadi
winding down to a crater-lake (was a knot).
You could imagine yourself, too, travelling hard
over ridges and valleys, the Hottentot
savages chasing you. Cannons could bombard
that last hilltop: your army with fire and sword
would attack when you were, in a lesson, bored.

THE GRAIN OF THE WOOD

If you looked at the grain of the wood, Mr.
Thompson said, what you were seeing were years.
So I thought, at this place here, like the glister
spread by the last of a wave, being sharp
at its edge, inside blurred with foam from the weirs
tumbling as breakers forever, or this scarp
in the contours precisely marked where the fawn
turned into dark cloud over a long and distinct,
pale horizon — that edge, each one, was the dawn
day of a spring, and the dark blurs had been inked
in as autumn and winter, penned by the Earth.
Here a war, a peace, or the year of your birth.

THE HONOURS BOARDS

There were honours boards up on a wall behind
Plum where he sat on the platform. All the names
were in gold to show honour. Was to remind
you of the hard work they'd done and how clever
they all were. 'Bursaries', scholarships, their fames
there with the dates, showing the school had never
missed a year getting glory like that. Uncle
Louis's name, Uncle Richard's, they were there.
You felt proud that they were. Was an example,
specially for me, and I knew you had to care
about homework, exams, until you were old.
Was all right, but they sometimes made me feel cold.

THE GOWNS

All the teachers wore black academic gowns.
Looked like the priests. Didn't wear a mortar-board,
though, like Will Hay. Was funny to see his frowns,
hear his mistakes, laugh when they heaved the carpet
and he couldn't get up while they pulled it, scared
all sorts of ways in the classroom. Favourite
films these were. But you couldn't do that for real.
Dark gowns like that, even if they were ragged
and all chalky, they made you wary and feel
all that they learned gave power. Seemed they carried
a reminder around with them just for you
that one day you might wear one and have power too.

CORRIDORS

In the grammar-school, partitions weren't needed.
All of the classrooms were along corridors,
like long tunnels or caves. Everyone hurried
through them. You hadn't to dawdle or to run,
and you kept to the right, though you let teachers
pass, you respected them. Some lessons were fun
and the rooms were so nice, but some were dungeons,
kept by a teacher who made it difficult.
There were stairs, too, you climbed or went down. Warrens,
mazes, you threaded to become an adult,
but those dungeons, they made your heart lose its strength
down the corridor's dismal, dwindling length.

PROCRASTINATION

Yes, I knew what 'procrastination' could do.
Latin for tomorrow. Often today,
though, as far as my homework went. Yes, I knew
I had both French and geography, but when
you can go to the films and not have to pay —
Well, if they're showing The Thirty-Nine Steps , then
you can't wait till it's Friday, Donat's so good,
Madeline Carroll so pretty, who would miss
it? At nine when it's over, you know you should
not have gone. Terrible feeling, no more bliss!
With two homeworks you don't start till ten! The shock
got you down. You'd be crying at one o'clock.

'TERM' AND 'EXAM'

In reports used to get positions both for
'Term' and 'Exam'. 'Term' was the marks you had
gained for homework, so someone could succeed or
fail in the two or only one. When Steve did
his exam very well, but homework was bad,
that was unfair, I'd think. Did as I was bid,
doing homework, while he got away with it.
But it was different with me. My maths homework
wasn't 9 out of 10 ever. To admit
Wright had done well — that Piggy could only burke,
but exams showed it was quite the opposite.
Just the same, Piggy still wouldn't admit it.

SCHOOL CERTIFYING

Was like prayers, with the invigilator as priest,
and the exam papers hymn books. Solemn
silence. No one could smile at all, nor at least
felt like they could, although Ben would have giggled
sure if there'd been a chance. It wasn't boredom
kept us all quiet. Not a one of us wriggled.
All those sealed-up thick envelopes containing
what would determine our future; the two clocks,
that they'd synchronized specially wrong, gaining
time right in front of our eyes. Would there be blocks
to your memory, coming out from nowhere?
A peculiar time. Repeated nightmare.

'THE MIDNIGHT SKATERS'

Was a poem that Miss Macarthy read us.
'Edmund' the name of the poet, so I saw
it as special for me. It made you anxious,
though, for she told us that the pond was Death, and where
it said none of the hop-poles could reach the floor
down in the pond, what it meant gave you a scare
because no one had any idea what you'd
find beyond death. I was glad I couldn't skate
because people fell in, couldn't be rescued.
Yet, as you walked up the street, perhaps your fate
could made ice of the stone. You'd 'to reel and pass'.
Was so hard to obey, hate Death 'through the glass'.

'THE PIKE'

Was 'The Pike' Miss Macarthy had chosen for
us as a special one. Edmund Blunden, he
was the poet again, so I was the more
interested. Was about a huge 'fish-of-prey',
she said, hidden away where no one could see
under the reeds as a sandbank. Fishes
play all around him. With eyes just like a 'stony
gorgon's'. What frightened me was he didn't stir
at all, 'still as a sunken bough'. The dozy
fish didn't know, as they fooled around, they were
in such danger. So deep in that dark water
was a peril, a shock that dealt sharp slaughter.

'THE LOTOS-EATERS'

Of our poems for School Certificate one
specially stood out for me, 'The Lotos-Eaters'.
Miss Macarthy had said a phenomenon
would be our treat one day, and, sure enough, her
reading rapt me in dream, offered strange pleasures
strong in an island landscape of streams and myrrh,
and of sunset and lotos, a paradise
hinting to memory again of something
once known, now near-forgotten. But to entice
Ulysses' sailors, that's what it was. Hearing
her explaining the danger, joy became curbed
by a menace. I felt deeply disturbed.

'TAM O' SHANTER'

'Tam O'Shanter' was fun. All the Scots words came
easily, romping along with the rhythm.
We all chanted the bit where the 'sullen dame
gathered her brows like the gathering storm', and
'her nursing her wrath' — with maximum
stress on the R's, as Miss Macarthy said; scanned
through the lines for assonance tunes, prickings,
rappings and bursts of alliteration. Best,
though, the scene in the church, where Nanny's kickings
tantalized Tam, all the more as she undressed.
Miss Macarthy, though, just wouldn't be precise
about why the lost tail was such good advice.

GUY MANNERING

Was another set-book — Scott's Guy Mannering,
which Miss Macarthy again managed to make
into startling discovery. Mouldering
ruins and murdering smugglers, the great curse
upon Bertram by Meg Merrilees, the snake
Glossin, the loyal friend Dinmont, the perverse
hand of fate upon Brown — what harsh denial
he had to suffer! What frustrations I shared
with this rightful heir! Oh, what years of exile!
Locked in the Custom-House as if no one cared,
could have been burned alive! The prospect was grim.
But we never discussed just why we were him.

ALGEBRA

Funny, when you did algebra and got through
finally, having unlocked all the hard bits
with the stuff that you'd learned, and you had come to
put down your pen, the feeling you had was strange,
for you hadn't got through to a prize. Minutes
spent on the problem, all that ink — just to change
one short set of mysterious marks into
equals that stopped. Your only reward was to get
to the end and feel proud that you had. You knew
all they had tested you on. Some kind of bet
without money or meaning. Just to solve them,
for the problem was done to do the problem.

GEOMETRY

Of all maths it was geometry I liked best.
Everything fitted — congruent triangles,
and the parallel lines — you applied the test,
matching the sides, and checking the theorem,
putting crosses and ticks by all the angles,
then down the page you went solving the problem.
Every step was secure, because of the rules.
Trick was to find the right theorem. The square
and the circle and the polygon, like the school's
pupils, came under a law, perfectly fair,
for the proof and the picture were there to see.
You could write at the bottom your Q.E.D.

GEOMETRY (II)

William Wordsworth liked geometry. Perhaps
poets like visual rhymes. Considered old hat
now by mathematicians, who see these maps
just as a pedagogical aid. How true,
but it misses the crisp imagery that
grows in the mind, the thrill of puzzling anew
as you turn the constructions in mental space,
airily checking to fit the visible
that is invisible, the joy when a place
clicks into place in no place, perfectible
structure reared on diamond theorems
(though we never had heard of the axioms).

A USEFUL WARNING

When you heated the beaker full of water
(this was in chemistry), you would see 'striae'
Mr. Druce said. On roads the air, the warmer
summer became, would start to wriggle, blurring
all the edges of things, reflecting the sky
into the earth. Suppose we saw wind blowing,
not just when there is dust or smoke, leaves or snow,
but when invisible, just think, you could say,
'There's a gust coming, crouch down!' and you would know
which way your boat would go. A cap blown away
could be caught before running made you look daft,
for it made you feel hot when everyone laughed.

LOSING MARKS

I had nearly spent all evening on drawing
'Sulphur Well: Hot Water Extraction process'.
Wasn't difficult being neater, hauling
marks in like that, 'cause I'd found Equivalents
much too hard. Drucy, though, would have to confess
this time I'd done well. Doing the Elements
gave the neat ones a chance. He had to give me
10 plus — my Fortnightly Order would be high! —
though I knew he didn't want to really
'cause of the way our eyes met. "Now if a fly
wants to buzz!" he would warn, and to disobey
always caught you. He took all my marks away.

CHEMICALS

From the chemist's we bought chemicals. Sulphur,
powdery yellow, that, lit, crawled with blue flame,
turned to brown oil, was choking, left a cinder
crystal. And copper sulphate, azure gravel,
which, dissolved, would resume slowly a crisp frame,
faceted angles of pure blue glass, gable
and strict pyramid, structured luck, assembled
out of the water we'd stirred. Potassium
permanganate, like iron filings turned garnet,
trailing their crimson smoke, a delirium
of intense knotted ribboning. We would get
education, yes, from a chemistry set.

THE METALS

All the metals had natures different from each
other. Not only could you do different things
with them, they were so special that all our speech
only pointed people towards them. Galvanized
iron had zinc on it, frosted butterflies' wings
glinting like shot silk as its thin crystallized
surface caught at the light. Copper was opaque
amber, mirroring sunsets. Cast iron felt like
frozen fudge, gave fingers a sandpaper take,
heavy and cold. Workaday steel, gray in spike,
bar and rail, stainless pure. Silver, dazzling grand.
They all offered their own chances to the hand.

SODIUM CHLORIDE

Mr Druce in the chemistry lesson said
chlorine had one too many electrons and
it was wanting to lose it, wanted to 'wed'
sodium — Why? Because sodium had one
that was missing. With chlorine ready to hand
over the spare, off would go the electron
and would dance in and out in a compromise
jig, taking turns, like a girl changing partners.
Neither chorine nor sodium had the prize:
they could imagine they had perfect numbers
for a moment, in phase, then out of phase.
Like a joke, the same thing went different ways.

DISSOLVING POTASSIUM PERMANGANATE

It was marvellous seeing the trails left by
bits of potassium permanganate. Slow
through the water they'd go, burning purple-dye-
smoke, like Daddy's cigarette. Their ribbon
was all thick at the edge; twisted it would show
faint in the middle. Then, the water's action
made it fold into scrolls like heraldry,
or they would crimp into rosettes, or spiral out
like the coils inside marbles. They went fuzzy
should you disturb them. Could stir a waterspout
in the water, with care, to a fine braiding.
See them wind all together before fading.

MERCURY

In the chemistry lab there was mercury.
Bloated like sagging balloons, the drops would run
off inside themselves, settle in a cranny,
wouldn't come out. In your palm you'd feel one press
like a finger, but cold. And you could have fun
tapping apart one blob — there would be no mess,
all the bits rounded up at once to shining
globes like ball-bearings in every size, planets
with their moons. Then you'd set about combining
them all, trying to catch the trick rivulets
that were bleeding away. How it good it was then
to see all them back in one globe again.

CALCIUM CARBIDE

Wetting calcium carbide gave off a flame.
It was 'acetylene'. You could light it just
as a lamp, but we thought it was tame
putting the stuff in a tin with an outlet.
In a screw-top glass bottle the bubbling thrust
up to a high pressure. It was our secret
weapon. Dropped down an old shaft, an enormous
bang at the bottom. Or you could stand it up
on a heap on a croft; at a radius
safe from the bits (parents would have the wind-up
if they knew) we threw stones. Couldn't retrieve it —
if it didn't go off, we had to leave it.

MAGNESIUM POWDER

Bought magnesium powder from the chemist's.
Grey, sparkly dust, as if we'd been prospectors
and had panned it. Another thing the scientists
had soon discovered: the whitest of light
would flash out from its burning. Photographers
used it to brighten a scene. Wanted the sight
for ourselves. Made a fuse out of string dipped in
sodium nitrate. Lit it and watched it spit
its way closer and closer. Then, Whoosh! — the tin
vanished in dazzle like ecstasy, and it
branded green on your vision right in your mind,
so wherever you looked, you found you were blind.

OUR REAL JOURNEY

'We are whirling round the Earth's axis,' said
Mr. Black, teaching us physics, 'at nine miles per
second.' But the whole Earth itself went ahead
round the Sun, its rate eighteen miles per second.
'Is our track then in epicycles? Would err
if you believed that! The Sun's on an errand
up to Vega in Lyra at eleven
miles every second, so, if we trailed smoke, we
would be leaving behind millenarian
spirals that spiralled light-years down into free
space beyond our conception.' Thought, no knowing
what the truth is about where one is going.

SEEING THE PAST

When you heard Mr. Black tell us when you saw
stars in the sky they were years old, every one
of a different age, you realised your
world wasn't just as it seemed. Up in the sky
in the daytime you'd see a familiar sun,
but it was one of eight minutes ago. I saw
the Andromeda nebula — perhaps it
didn't exist any more. Light took time, then,
to get to you from everything — a minute
down from the Moon, and less than seconds when
you saw the garden the room, your hands. You could see
only films of the world as it used to be.

IRON FILINGS

Would get iron filings, scatter them on paper;
underneath, put a magnet. At once they twitched
into pattern, the secret force their shaper,
here frisked on end like hair in fright, there arranged
like long eyelashes. Move but slightly, they itched
straight in uncanny obedience, afraid
not to be as the power ordained, so flat,
bowed in obeisance in crowds, so still, upright
at attention en masse ; between the poles that
fix all their being, they lie head to toe, tight
to the lines they themselves have drawn. They lie prone
as if all of the force was all of their own.

THE SPARK

Mr. Black in the physics lesson showed us
sparks. An induction coil raised the voltage.
Those 'electrons' that hid in minus and plus
jumped across space between two knobs of copper,
kind of writing in harsh lilac, a savage
scribble that never settled, angry sputter
that began with a crack as if in protest
it should be trapped at all into such writhing,
into endless attempts to level, to wrest
dead satisfaction out of live opposing.
We can't see those electrons save where they shine,
say, except for the fire that burns in the line.

STANDING WAVES

Blowing over the top of the milk bottle
made such a hoot you could feel it. Hear the draught
making pipes out of cracks. The hosepipe nozzle
sang through its nose. Just two hands could be an owl.
With two tins and a long string we telegraphed
messages, raising a siren wail or growl
and the tins made a zithering noise. They said
'resonance' caused the vibrations, a 'standing wave'
in the bottle, which, though it wiggled, was dead
still. And in physics we learned that an octave
was like something inside an atom. If you
whirled your sparkler round, you could see what you drew.

THE DIAGRAM OF ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES

On the diagram up in the physics lab
all the electromagnetic waves were shown.
Was a rainbow for light, all the rest drab,
uncoloured, stretching through thousands of wavelengths.
But so tiny was visible light, our own
band there among all the others, of strange strengths
that could whisk through a bone or carry a picture.
Outside the school window the horse-chestnut in
May was brandishing high its candelabra,
swishing its dog's-tongue leaves. As I saw it spin
emerald, cream, and speckled pink from the light,
made me wonder what beauty lay out of sight.

COLOURS AS REFLECTIONS

Mr. Black said that colours were reflected.
Red tulips kept all the other colours to
themselves, mirrored just red. Your eye detected
one part of sunshine from the tulips, one more
from the bluebells, another from leaves. The blue,
red, green and yellow were just part of the store
that was hidden in sunshine. You were seeing
nothing but sun all around you. A dewdrop
had the sun as a star in all its being;
other things chose this bit or that — lollipop,
river, Rivington Pike — you saw it because
it had chosen. That's why you knew what it was.

CAPILLARY ACTION

Watched the water go climbing up the cotton
thread. Was 'capillary action' the physics
teacher said. Up from the pool, in the rotted
wood went the soaking that would hasten decay,
and it went against gravity. Even bricks
needed a damp course to stop it. Ink turned grey
at the edges when spreading on the blotting-
paper, like vapour above a nimbus cloud,
with a rainbow tint. Between glass panes, leaving
silverly twitching with a pulse. Water bowed
a meniscus at sides, for up it must strive.
In 'capillaries' blood was keeping us live.

BIOLOGY

I was bored in biology. The text-book,
written by Fritsch and Salisbury, had drawings
of cross-sections of flowers and seeds. They took
you through all the 'families'. You'd to have by heart
all the anthers and stamens, all the foldings
in of the 'floral diagrams', every part
as it was on the page. Would hear Miss Lord's voice
saying 'capitulum'. 'ovary', pistil'.
You to sit there and learn without any choice,
copy the pictures and write in each label.
She said this wasn't all a good schoolboy learns:
there were still 'Seaweeds, Mosses, Toadstools and Ferns'.

WATER AND MAN

Once Miss Lord, our biology teacher, told
us that the body was mostly water and
through our life from our youth to when we were old,
hundreds of gallons would pass. So I thought when
looking up at the clouds spread out in a grand
sunset, some molecules there were me. But then
came the thought, was the same for all the people
born in the world from the beginning of man:
Julius Caesar was up there and Hannibal,
William Shakespeare, Socrates, Genghis Khan,
all the good and the bad, the famous, unknown,
all mixed up together, by winds idly blown.

IN ART LESSONS

I could draw a straight line so I always came
top in art. Patterns made up with compasses
and a ruler would fill the page with the same
thing more than once, and, if your hand was steady,
you could thread with your brush through all the mazes
never allowing a single hair any
chance to spot any wet across the drawn line.
Albert got dollops of paint where he shouldn't.
He'd have red blots all over the neat design
Teacher had helped him with, but I just couldn't
understand Ben and Dudley, couldn't think why
they'd deliberately smudge while pretending to try.

AN ARCHITECTURAL BLUNDER

Was Miss Harwood, our grammar-school art teacher,
who had suggested it. We design our own
house, the task she gave to match each feature
down on the plan in black lines for different floors
with a picture you drew. Whatever was shown
ruled out on paper, the bay-windows, the doors,
any wings, any 'mansard roofs', garages,
porches, conservatories, all must be plain.
Was such fun thinking up ideal houses.
'But what's this, Wright? One doesn't have to explain
that a lavatory, surely, isn't outside!'
They all laughed. There was nowhere for me to hide.

CARLYLE: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

While Miss Moscrop in history was telling us
all about Danton and Camille Desmoulins
and the French Revolution, thought it a plus
when. at a jumble sale, I bought a book by
Carlyle, four inches thick, ten inches in span,
all of its print double-columned. Was so dry,
though, I just couldn't read it. The book was old,
too, with its dry covers crumbling, faded pink,
with grey dust in its indented letters, mould
spotting its brown pages. I began to think
it was like a book brought back from a dream. Dared
not to open it. I even became scared.

THE 'CABAL'

'Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and
Lauderdale.' If your memory was good. you
could get high marks in tests, though to understand
why the Cabal had to be secret was more
difficult. You took care that only you knew
how much you didn't know: it would keep your score
in the teens. You could smile knowingly when she
mentioned 'Cabal'. 'Clifford, Arlington...' became
like a password you needn't finish: you'd see
she knew. Her smile said she thought you knew the same.
That's as good as you knowing. I'd played my part.
It was, honestly, learning it off by heart.

A RECITATION OF THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH' BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

On the day of Pearl Harbour, our history
teacher so wanted to celebrate this new-
found alliance, so happy for our country.
All of the junior school left their lessons
and were called into hall. She took us through
USA history, founded by Britons.
Then we sang American songs, like 'John
Brown's Body', 'Star-Spangled Banner'. But then, to
my surprise, she called, 'Wright, come up here!' And on
stage had to read out a poem. Was much too
long, 'Miles Standish' by Longfellow. Had a go.
We got madly bored. Felt such a long fellow.

CLIMBING THE ROPES

Soapy urged us to climb the ropes. Funny how
you could twitch them so loosely clockwise, anti-
clockwise, for, at the top, the hooks would allow
some play, even removal, but you couldn't
pull them down: you went up with the energy
in your hands and your knees. But if you wouldn't,
you were sissy. So clutching with timid thigh,
sweating palm, I would rise to Soapy's order,
stretching, cramping, and stretching till I was high
above all. Then I learned what would reward a
climber. Shuddering sweetness came to the touch
of the rope up me, deep at my crutch.

THE SPORTS

How I liked the school sports! There were egg races —
Only the ones who had steady hands could win.
They were pot eggs, of course. Then there were chases
taking a ball back and forth where everyone
in the form had a go. I liked to go in
specially for the three-legged races: it was fun
keeping time with my cousin Dennis. People
who didn't know how to keep in rhythm staggered
just all over the place. But we weren't able,
once the old gym teacher went, to have 'backward'
games like that. We did sprinting, and 'eurhythmics',
and we trained as if doing the Olympics.

THE PHOTO COMPETITION

On one Sports Day they had a competition.
All of the teachers brought old photographs of when
they were children. A game of recognition,
up on a notice-board for threepence a try.
They were nice little children, so charming then,
ready to play with you, wouldn't terrify
at all, just as a kitten's nicer than a
cat or a puppy a dog, a calf a cow
or a foal a horse. Wondered in what manner
all of them changed. You couldn't help asking how
that so innocent boy with the aeroplane
was now ready to whip with a whopping cane.

FOOTBALL

I thought football was fun in the first form. All
played in the game together. We had our tricks
that would beat them, and special words we would call
setting them up. I liked being goalie too.
You got muddy, but never puffed. Nice to mix
everyone. Found out different things about them — you
could depend upon Steve for speed, and on Vern
when it was dribbling was wanted. And Dudley —
didn't know he was good at that. You could learn
watching him, though in class he wasn't brainy.
But as soon as we got in the Thirds, football
wasn't nice when they put us in teams and all.

JOHNNY THE DRIBBLER

They all wanted to have Johnny on the team.
He was a dribbler. He aimed to catch your eye
and would smile as if saying, "You see, I seem
friendly — I wouldn't cheat you, would I? — A game
is a game after all!" But then he was by
you, because you thought he was going the same
way as you when he wasn't. His feet always
ran on to where he wasn't looking. 'Feigning'
it was called, sort of acting. "Avoid his gaze!"
was the advice they gave during our training.
That was cheating the cheat, and yet it seemed wrong.
Still, he played very well, though he wasn't strong.

PUTTING TOOLS IN ORDER

Yes, 'the tool for the job', the woodwork teacher
said. It was lovely to see the files laid out,
all the flat and the round and triangular,
graded by sizes, and the spanners nested
in their slots — fun to place them back without doubt,
fitting in easily. Then there were chested
trays for screws, nails, and nuts and bolts — you could drop
them in according to size so you could reach
for them just when you wanted. Was like a shop,
everything waiting. Of course they had to teach
you the right one to use, so you'd get the knack —
but I used to enjoy so putting them back.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

In geography, all of the 'physical'
caught at my mind: glaciers gouging out those deep
U-shaped valleys across geological
obstacles, grinding them over with rasps made
out of rocks, and then melting, leaving those steep
sides with their pyramids of scree, a cascade
like a big dredger's buckets, a tarn set high
up in a corrie like some Norse giant's soup.
Then the sea floods back in, making fiords by
drowning them. There to the great past you could swoop
in your mind, see the land as the marble some
sculptor-god kept through the ages under his thumb.

CALCULATING A PANORAMA

On a map, if you drew out a fan from one
place, and for each like drew a section, measuring
all the contours along it, then what you'd done
helped you to see what you'd see, because you could
safely check the perspective — you were tracing
lines of sight, working out which mountain you would
see and which not. Drew out the panorama
putting the dots in to match those lines of sight,
and then, bit by bit, slowly growing sharper,
saw the whole landscape exactly from the height
where you were. Was surprised what numbers can do —
though the picture can't equal the real view.

MAKING UP GEOLOGICAL MAPS

Geological maps I loved for their 3-
D intersections of surface and strata.
I'd imagine topographies and then key
in my imagined layers to see how they
would appear on a map. Then you could chart a
fault across mountains, or do an exposé
of an anticline cut through by a winding
gorge, or I'd make it much harder with harder
rocks that forced out their scarps — was a job finding
just how the land would lie, if they would retard a
river there, dam a lake. A sort of combat.
Was like God when you set them struggling like that.

THE POWER OF A HEADMASTER'S WORD

Our headmaster we called 'Plum' — no one knew why,
but the strange thing was, 'Plum' came to fit him,
or that he fitted 'Plum' to himself, to vie
with the fruit for the meaning. No confusion
at all — only the colour of his cheek, grim
in his study with cane, or of contusion
on behind or on hand. Everyone of us
he called 'Johnnie'. That fitted too, for Johnnies
were unwise, were so gullible. To nonplus
then was easy, to frighten out their follies
was mere child's play. He saw us each as the same,
and so quaking Johnnies was what we became.

'OUR GALLANT RUSSIAN ALLIES'

We all heard of our gallant Russian allies.
Pictures of Comrade Stalin showed him smiling
with the peasants, or looking ever so wise,
or very stern with the flags. And we all sang
'Fatherland of mine' — it went with such a swing
(better than 'God Save the King'). We felt a pang
when Smolensk fell and felt relieved when they saved
Stalingrad. Plum, our head, became a member
of the Anglo-Soviet lot, and we behaved
perfectly when Professor Trofimova
came (though we were so bored). All fought to save lands
till the Yanks and the Russians at last shook hands.

MISS DUXLEY

When Miss Duxley came in, she would already
be in the middle of declining a noun:
'Mensa, mensam, mensae, mensae, mensa...' We
knew she expected us to join in, although
she had never once said so. If sitting down,
quickly you got up and the sight of a row
doing this and the growing chorus, 'Mensas,
mensas...' made everyone stop what they were at.
She was smiling. How good we were as a class!
Never a raising of voice save for a pat
on the back. Made us think no one should fail
for a lady so delicate and so frail.

MISS HICKS

Yes, Miss Hicks was a very good teacher. She
led you through Latin grammar as if it were
like a forest with paths she knew. You weren't free,
though, to go wandering. Her stout body, stern
face, her aquiline nose, made you follow her
feeling you couldn't; for you would have to learn,
and that feeling you'd never dare to admit to,
only because the way she saw you was what
everyone knew you really were, and yet you
felt that it wasn't. Though she liked me a lot,
used to wonder who was it that she liked. Said it
was Oxford's demand you had a Credit.

MR. HOLROYD

I would watch Mr. Holroyd, the French teacher,
wondering what sort of man he was really.
Had a rubbery smiling face, would reach a
hand to the chalk to throw it. It seemed he would
only talk to the boys and liked to freely
make jokes at someone's expense, usually good
ones, which worked us up till we were in a state,
giggling away, as he got more sarcastic,
more nonsensical. Then, though — what I would hate —
he would turn fierce, break out with something drastic,
rushing up, clipping heads, with an angry frown.
Something made him enjoy this wild up and down.

MONSIEUR CHARLOT

In the text-book in French lessons were funny
drawings of 'Monsieur Charlot'. It was to make
us think that French wasn't boring, hard or crummy.
Would be chased by policemen in tall helmets,
make the burglar fall into a pond, or break
plates by mistake, run bowlegged with two baskets
on his feet, and all this would make translation
easy for children like us. But the trouble
was we never saw Charlie Chaplin. Reckon
Daddy had seen him. So it was a muddle.
Should be Laurel and Hardy, not him from the past.
At the grammar-school, though, they made the books last.

MR. LEEK'S FINGERNAILS

When he went through my book, I noticed Mr.
Leek's hands. His fingernails were smooth and so clean.
They were shining with a sort of pearly glister.
Right at the ends they were silky white, like hair
on an old Church-of-England vicar or dean,
ready to beam so serenely when at prayer,
with a pat on the head for you after. But
Mammy said men like that never had to keep
machines going, so no oily grease or smut
got down their nails, and there was no dust to sweep
up. I learnt then that only someone who fails
his exams would end up with Daddy's black nails.

MR. MOORE LOSES HIS TEMPER

Mr. Moore, he leapt over the desk, a grey-
haired man, enraged at Hodgkinson, our football
wonder. Something he said, something cheeky, may
have made the teacher see red.. I didn't know —
only there was this quiet man, his face all
suddenly widened and heightened, his eyes aglow,
and his teeth in a terrible grin, glasses
tilted askew, vaulting like an acrobat
to attack the great champion. The class's
silence made a huge space for his shouts as he spat
out each word like a whip: 'Don't think I'm a fool
just because you have won against Bolton School!'

MR. MOORE'S JOKE

When he heard we liked music, old Mr. Moore,
after the physics lesson, told us a joke
of a Chinaman. After the overture,
asked if he liked it, said he preferred the bit
before that. Mr. Moore's laughing seemed to choke
him. We all laughed very politely. But it
wasn't funny a month later when he told
us it all over again. Made me wonder
if it was just as funny as that. Did old
people get fixed on things that way? A blunder
to think that the east wasn't as good as the west.
Mr. Moore was so pleased to feel we were best.

ELOCUTION LESSONS

Our Miss Davies, besides teaching music at
school, would earn extra money helping people
to talk better, just like an aristocrat,
leave all their Lancashire accent behind them
and talk proper the BBC way. Noble
voices could make people sit up, for 'madam'
wasn't 'moddum' and 'smoking' wasn't 'smookin'.
Called it an 'elocution' lesson. So they went
to her house and got grades for this genuine
English. Did recitations with gestures, spent
hours improving their vowels. You were a dude
if you went, for she said the word 'good' like 'feud'.

CANTATA: 'THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER'

For one Speech Day, Miss Davies trained the choir to
sing an elaborate setting of Lewis
Carroll's 'Walrus and Carpenter'. For each cue,
each phrasing complication, each expressive,
neat crescendo, piano, had to practise
lunchtimes and after school, a strict, oppressive,
long regime, with reminders how the honour,
ours and the school's, was involved — distinguished
persons present and each scholarship winner —
our fine performance would give a most finished
gloss to this great occasion. On that sunny
day, we sang something not in the least funny.

MY FIRST PUBLISHED POEM

'A is for Algebra with a's, b's and c's.'
Saw my first poem published. The second line,
'B's for Biology, the birds and the bees.'
That had a joke in it, but it wasn't mine. To see
my name there printed clear, it was really fine.
Was in The Rivingtonian. 'A B C'
was the title. Miss Reece had showed us that rhyme
wasn't enough for a rhythm — the words had
to fall in with a swing as well, like the time
music has too. If the words stumble, it's bad
'cause you won't please the reader as would a song,
for a poem must do that to take him along.

GRAMMAR WITH MISS MACARTHY

Miss Macarthy made every side of English
interesting. Grammar, they said, was 'dry and dusty'.
Not with her. In her lessons, one came to cherish
working on clauses. She showed us how Shakespeare
took adverbial clauses of time neatly
placed in succession, made a rhythm you hear
all unnoticed when you read his fine sonnet
'When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced', say,
and how Wordsworth firmed blank verse putting on it
schemes of syntactical rhythm (the array
of noun phrases in 'Tintern Abbey'). Grammar
gave to poems a music, power and glamour.

BOX ANALYSIS

I enjoyed doing Box Analysis. Each
sentence would fit somehow, whether Transitive
or Intransitive, Complement. She would teach
us how to split them all up, even those which
wouldn't fit just exactly — like the Passive
and the Imperative. Sometimes you had to switch
to a wiggly line specially for Indirect
Objects. Was funny that everyone's brain knew
inside which word would go into the Subject
box and the Object box, to keep a verb true
to the time in its tense. It all went to show
you can learn what inside you already know.

CONFUSABLES

There were so many words that you'd not to mix
up. For example, disinterested didn't
ever mean you weren't interested. There were tricks
right at the end of words too, for sensual
was a nasty word, sensuous good. 'Flagrant'
putting precipitous to mean 'daredevil',
'rash' or 'hasty'. And due to couldn't govern
clauses, but only a noun. Was owing to
that you had in your 'armoury'. Confusion
only results if you use refute when you
mean 'deny'. Had to learn, 'not be in a daze',
if you wished to win through the language maze.

SEXUAL EDUCATION FROM MISS MACARTHY

Was a time Miss Macarthy really bewildered
all those rough lads who liked smutty jokes, giggling
behind hands in the Shakespeare lesson, whispered,
grinned, shook and spluttered, showing how they knew it
all already, could see indecent meaning
hidden whatever the sentence. 'Must admit,'
she said, 'men like a look at a girl's legs sometimes.'
Forget the occasion for the comment, but
all the lads were struck dumb in their pantomimes,
really embarrassed. Something at last had shut
them up, rattled them out of their loutishness.
As for me, made me question my priggishness.

MISSING MISS MACARTHY

At the age of thirteen in English I faced
Kinglake's Eothen and Julius Caesar.
It was sad, though, for it was rather a waste
since we had him and not Miss Macarthy
for our teacher that year, and to retrieve a
liking for both took years. They became starkly
boring, grey as their print, stretching out for miles,
hours, the whole term, laborious senselessness.
I believe now that she with her honest wiles,
clever anticipations, and her tireless,
changed reiterations would have made us take
to Shakespeare, to observant, witty Kinglake.

THE GYM MISTRESS

At the bottom of the steps in the corridor,
standing and talking about The Rivals. I
had been in it. Enjoying local glamour
playing as Captain Absolute. I had been
stopped — the gym mistress, as I was walking by,
buttonholed me, saying how much she enjoyed the scene
with Sir Anthony. There she was, in her short
skirt, with those beautiful thighs only two feet
from mine. Why, it was like at once being caught
up in a roaring storm, I suffered complete
deafness. Dazzled and blinded by thoughts of thigh,
I was dumb as a waxwork, and she knew why.

UNWANTED MEMORIES

'You're the boy in the Cross-Country who tried to
pass the winning-post first time round!' That teacher
had the habit of never forgetting who
did the worst and reminding them. There was that
girl who said she would go to the cinema
with me, tongue at her lips, turning me down flat
when she heard who'd refused. I fell off my bike
and the front tooth, never capped, always
showed my falling. They said losing a limb's like
not having lost it though you're crippled — but days
you were foolish, defeated, although you boast
they've gone, can throb like an amputation's ghost.

NICKNAMES

They had nicknames, the staff. The P.T. teacher,
'cause of his hygiene fad, we all called 'Soapy'.
We all laughed at the name. I used to wonder
why it could be. When he went on about health,
you'd see people start washing hands secretly,
looking for giggles. In a name a sort of stealth
turned a person to fool. Course we didn't like
teachers — they bossed you around, but why was it
calling names was a weapon we used to strike
back? After all, soap smelt nice. Had to admit
that to wash was okay. They could turn on you.
Didn't matter at all — any name would do.

THE SCHOOL MOTTO

Had a school motto: 'Spare the rod and spoil the
child.' I asked Mammy what 'rod' meant. She said it
meant the cane, 'cause a rod was long and thin, a
hard stick that wouldn't bend, though a cane would bend
'cause you'd see that Plum bent it. It was to hit
naughty boys, not girls, which was unfair. Offend
against rules and the punishment taught you sense.
Later, you see, if you didn't stop, much worse
things would happen. If you had intelligence,
you understood that. It was no use to curse.
On the school seal a man had a 'birch' so fat
just to prove the truth of a motto like that.

ADVANTAGES

Since my uncles had been there, they smiled at me,
not at others. I found Roman Catholics
had a start on the rest, for 'Agnus Dei'
meant The Lamb of God — more smiles from the Latin
teacher. Wireless at home was electronics
at school: they would pretend to wait with a grin
for my expert advice. I had been read to
often, unlike some others, and could pronounce
all the difficult words. I shook my head, too,
at the ignorance, was glad to see them pounce
on mistakes, was glad to be up to their wiles,
to be able to share the safety of smiles.

THE HOUSES' LISTS

When they made out the houses' lists, they always
tried to put people of the same family
all in one house, 'cause it'd be bound to raise
problems. So it was all right to cheer Sarah
when she ran in a race. It would be silly
if a relation was cheering another
runner, even remaining silent if she
won. But your friend might not be in Queen's, but in
Holmes or Pilkington. You could pretend to be
booing, but funnily, and if he should win,
you could secretly wave, but Olympiad
results had to count even though he looked sad.

THE 'Q' SOCIETY

In our secret society all our friends
were enrolled. Your 'Q' number was pasted
on your gasmask tin, underneath. What our ends
were was secret from our parents, from each other.
On Manœuvres, at first we found we wasted
time. Good tactics were foiled as if my mother
knew it all and had warned them. Good battle maps,
with the Pike all surrounded by neat oblongs
like diagonal flags, didn't fit the scraps
they turned into. In order to right the wrongs
we decided in future to fix the winners
before starting, like Calvin did the sinners.

THE 'Q' SOCIETY'S CODE

We made codes for the most secret messages.
such as 'Meet me at nine. Bring your Dinky Toy
army.' Marvellous making new languages
out of triangles, squares and circles. No one
else could read it but you, so you could deploy
all your forces without any grown-up gun
going off that would spoil your play. To decode
it you needed a key at first, but soon we
found ourselves understanding. The meaning showed
through without any bother. Cryptography
lost its point then though. Rather go to the fuss
of a new code than see what we say to us.

THE 'Q' SOCIETY MAGAZINE

Was exciting the 'Q' Society. Made
magazines once a month (for two months only).
Writers, editors, printers we hadn't played
ever before. It was wonderful feeling
that the readers would read what you wrote — jokey
stories and messages in code revealing
our next plans for a battle, and some puzzles,
strange facts, like Ripley's 'Believe it or Not'. We
wrote them out in nice print. Showed them friends, uncles,
aunts, and Grandad and Granma. Only Mammy
read them all the way through. But still, in the end,
really wished that she didn't have to pretend.

SEEING AT SCHOOL

An ink eye turned the line of wood-grain into
a sour face. Without ink my eye saw a blot
as an angel. The letter 'e' grinned at you,
while the 'a' would look pale whatever the word
you were writing. For fun, we asked if the spot
on the board was a full-stop. When words were blurred,
we could ask if they weren't what they were, knowing
what they were. In the Blodge lesson the sunny
patch became a new map: it would be showing
up as daffodils when it was Geography.
It was easy. With eyes open wide, you dreamed.
The best was, you could see what you liked, it seemed.

CRACKS IN THE PAINT

There were cracks in the paint. In Latin lessons
I would see them as mountainsides up which I
as a minuscule climber in two dimensions
would be struggling without effort. Or they were
little streams that a dam could then amplify
into power for me. Oddly sometimes a spur
led me off to a place where the line broke.
Each end, curved like a claw, just pricked the inside
of the other, as lightly as the pen-stroke
in a letter. But this I could not abide
to look at. It was not that they didn't look neat —
but the pain of those points! Why couldn't they meet?

HATS AND CAPS

Hats and caps were important. Was a mitre,
silver-embroidered on the school cap because
was a bishop that founded us. A lighter
cap for the girls, a 'biretta', the badge just
in red thread and not silver. Could ask what was
wearing a cap for. Plum said that's what you must
spend your time finding out. And the postman wore
sort of a square box — for letters? Policemen,
who were tall to begin with, looked taller, more
frightening. Priests had a hat must mean heaven
marked them out, like big chessmen, and it would prove
that, wherever they went, they knew how to move.

HATS

The policeman's hat didn't really make him
taller, we said, and our school blazers were black
just the same. Didn't stop him looking grim.
When I saw Father Moylan's black hat, I thought
of a chessman, but one going to attack
suddenly. Mortar-boards, blood-red inside, you ought
to respect and not think of slapping mortar
over them. Wigs got all smeary with greasepaint
in the school play and should have fitted tighter.
'Saw your wig slipping!' they said, but wigs weren't quaint
on a judge even if it should slip. And no one
ought to laugh 'cause they weren't hanging blokes for fun.

THE WINNER

I had won in the School Chess Competition.
Got a red pencil set in gilt leatherette
(looks like leather but isn't). My ambition
was to win over Walter, Steve and Dennis.
They admired the prize, at least seemed to, yet
it was only a game. I had felt like this
after 'getting my scholarship'. That Teddy
hadn't got his was hard, but it wouldn't make
any difference to us. Was being happy
I had passed being glad he's made a mistake?
It was only a game. But I'd think, he shirked
all his sums. On the chess books, how hard I'd worked!

'IN THE WARS'

We would always play wars. What else would you play?
with your guns and your swords? 'Being in the wars', though
that was quite different. Cycling home one day
much too fast, with a loose seat, I went sideways.
Blank, then. Slumped in the men's staffroom. They are
looking worried at me. Doctor had to sew
there on the side of my lip where there's a scar.
Mammy said I was brave. She was biting her
lip. My front tooth, too, was broken, and my arm.
So I'd 'been in the wars', was no amateur.
You didn't think, when you played, about the harm
when you clasped at your chest, out on the croft,
and you didn't play nurses — that would be soft.

THE BROKEN TOOTH

I'd go touching my broken tooth with my tongue
after my accident on my bike, and look
in the mirror and think that, when I was young,
it was there still. I 'had' it then and didn't
'have' it 'now'. Was it all written in a book
Time always kept, or a film in the present
but which no one could pay him to show again.
That was still me, the boy whose teeth were so nice
and straight, easy to bite with, and — go back then —
there I would be, smiling, eating my choc-ice,
not a care in the world, such a happy youth!
It was me, though, whose smile showed a broken tooth.

THE GREAT SNOWBALL FIGHT

It had snowed in the morning at school. Lunchtime
it was so still and cloud-shadowed, and the snow
was so deep and so soft we knew it was prime
snowballing snow. One army was Horwich
and the other Westhoughton. They said they'd go
out of the gate and attack over the ditch
of the road. Was an epic battle. If you
caught one, you had to withdraw until you got
to a hundred. Was swizzo! Nobody threw
hard ones and yet the battle got really hot.
Came in panting, excited. Was historic!
And from now, in another sense it's epic.

FRIDAYS

I loved Fridays, for, after school, with Mammy
went on a tour of the aunties, one by one,
in a circle through Horwich. While the auntie
gossiped with Mammy, there was Uncle Gus's
apple-tree, and the different comics' fun
always at Auntie Eva's, and Dennis's
toys at Auntie May's. We cousins would plan things
while we were given some treat like an Eccles
cake. I found it exciting at openings
wide of the doors, with the smiles and the cuddles —
it was like having homes everywhere! Riddle
why they called them after auntie, not uncle.

TIME

Used to think about time. You could say Horwich
stayed the same always, but then you'd see the tram
men who had to repair the lines pouring tar
in round the new cobbles. Rockhaven Castle
was knocked down. Perhaps one day Rivington dam,
strong as it was, would have gone. In a fossil
you would see the last print of a life across
millions of years, but everything else had changed.
So in secret this time, working from Red Moss
up to the top of Winter Hill, had arranged
that his days and his nights would have blurred, shaped
till no part of our town had their grip escaped.

'COURTESY COPS' IN ACTION

The police had a scheme to encourage road
safety: the 'Courtesy Cops'. They made polite
remarks over a loudspeaker, Highway Code
rules and reminders, as well as praise for good
drivers. Once, though, their courtesy gave a fright
to Cousin Dennis and me, cycling to Chorley to swim.
Cycling along side by side, probably more
feet apart than we should, but just at a whim
since the road seemed quite empty. But a great roar
of a voice came with 'CAREFUL, KIDDIES! CAREFUL!'
out of nowhere, an earful far from civil.

CHRISTMAS ENTERTAINMENTS

In the week before Christmas every form did
something on stage to entertain. Afternoons
we all went to the hall. Was nice to get rid
of silly lessons with no exams ahead.
There were so many people who could play tunes,
solo piano or duets, and some said
poems, some were good singers. I remember,
once in the sixth, we put on a full-length play,
Barrie's Admirable Crichton, one December,
all in one week, with no teachers to betray
what we'd planned. In our schooling we may have lacked
drama lessons, but we were keen to act.

BEFORE THE PLAY

There were greasy sticks smelling of sweet perfume.
Nice to be rubbed by Miss Reece with the smooth end
of one. Sitting there, feeling your cold costume,
while she was holding your chin like your mother.
You could walk round, a wizard, talk to a friend
there in the gym, wave your wand, see the other
actors — princess in tinsel, king with his crown
next to the jumping bucks, to the maths teacher.
We were coloured, but he was in his black gown.
All of our play there in our heads, unseen, a
special secret we knew, that would unroll in
front of them, villain, hero and heroine.

ACTING THE VILLAIN

Miss Macarthy produced a play called Nix-Nought-
Nothing, and I was the Wizard. A tall hat
like a cornet, a long robe. Everyone thought,
seeing me act, I was a frightening villain
with my moons and my stars, an aristocrat
waving my wand to ensure my dominion
over silly old kings, and princes with no
name. Was the best part: you startled everyone
with your tricks and your spells. The soppy hero
had no good lines even though at last he won,
and my make-up was better — lots of greasepaint
for my face, not for that of the feeble saint.

THE 'FISHERMAN'

As the Wizard in Nix Nought Nothing one line
I had to say was 'Here comes one who is fish
for my net!' Was the Prince. His power would be mine
once all my spells had been chanted. Everything
was so easy. Was all I could ever wish.
Made me a fisherman. I'd made plans to spring
a neat trap for the stupid fish who didn't
dream that his downfall was coming. Kind of joke
I had made, for a man's no fish. I wasn't
really a fisherman. Was the way you spoke
if you wanted some fun. Miss Macarthy let
me pretend to be throwing a real net.

CASTING A SPELL

Had a wand as the Wizard, a pointed hat,
stars on my gown, and crescent moons, but the best
was the ring Miss Macarthy gave me, a fat
red one, so big I couldn't close my fingers,
all transparent and glowing, a treasure-chest
ruby, so smooth, so cool. She was dressing us
to fit each of the characters' character.
Wearing that ring (for boys don't wear them) made me
feel so strange, just as if in the theatre
I had become the Wizard for real. Felt free
in the gym where we dressed to wave my wand at
them and say they'd be turning into a cat.

MY STAGE-TURN: 'MARMALADE'

'Yes, and that's what the chicken said when it came
out of the egg — Look what Marmalade ! Egg for
breakfast — tea-time! There's Welsh Rarebit — What's the same?
"Run Rabbit, run, Rabbit , run, run, run!"' Every
time I'd make them think backwards — they thought no more
words were to come — I'd make their meaning messy,
tripped them up when they thought they were safe. Was my
stage-turn. Up there in front of them so they all
had to look and to listen, all had to try
keeping their words steady, heading for a fall!
Was such fun there alone with my thought so free —
was such fun 'cause I knew they kept following me!

PAULINE THE PRODUCER

Didn't notice the girls much. Pauline Cummings,
tall, rather gawky, with straight red hair, didn't
say a lot, so I noticed her less. But things
alter, surprise you. When, in the fifth, we had
to arrange what our Christmas entertainment
that year would be, it was Pauline who was glad
to be boss, find the play, be the producer.
I, who had been in so many plays, thought she
couldn't do it at all, just an amateur
holding us up all the time, having to be
overruled and corrected. Had to confess
her commands were in place, the play a success.

BACKING THE BOOKS

Used to back all my books, exercise- and text-
books with that brown paper that has stripy lines,
very faint. The same subject books were all next
to each other and wouldn't get mixed up, for
I'd put colours along the top of the spines,
one for each subject (red for Latin). You could draw
out the two that you wanted right away.
Didn't get dirty, and you knew which was your book.
Liked the matt side of brown paper — it would stay
firm to your fingers. All your books then would look
nice, all neat in your desk. I hoped I could spread
what was in them as neat inside my own head.

BROKEN ARM AS WEAPON

I had broken my arm. They could sign their name
on the plaster, but no rude words. I allowed
them the privilege. Autographs proved my fame.
The essential excuse from your parent that
Soapy always demanded I was so proud
not to need in the gym. But best was during
a geography lesson. Leaky would fire
you off lines like Vesuvius. On catching
sight of me at the back, shouted, 'Wright! I require
you to bring me that thing on your desk!' Across
I went, to meet authority at a loss.

THE NOBLE VICTOR LAMB

'Victor Lamb — he would not have done this!' He had
in his hand a note, written about me. What it
was I didn't know — truth about just how bad
I had been, some analysis, some secret
explanation of my lie for the benefit
of all future inquirers. My inviolate
reputation was nothing. Though I had talked,
I had said that I hadn't. His paper trembled.
'Victor Lamb! If he had been caught thus when I walked
in! Honour came first. He never dissembled!'
How did Victor Lamb do it? Hostility
rose in me against clever nobility.

DRUG

It was Mac pinched the chloroform from the lab.
Put on a handkerchief, you had to sniff it.
It was wrong, we all knew it. They would nab
you if they found out, but Mac wanted to be
just as grown-up as them, and no one dared split.
Mac always laughed at the rules, a comedy
that he winkled the truth out of, knowing much
better than parents and teachers where pleasure
could be got, and that's what rules were for, and such
bold introductions he would arrange, treasure
in the nose for disciples. Feeling remote,
I remember my doubtings, seeing him gloat.

THEIR RULES

There were boys took their caps and bent the nebs in
two. Took a perfectly good cap and cracked it.
Must be cardboard inside, flexible and thin,
letting the neb curve nicely, but they ignored
that and broke it deliberately, and the split
wouldn't go back. Of course, they thought they had scored
one against all the teachers, even the nice
ones, because nowhere the rules said you couldn't
and you had got your cap on. Had, too, the spice
all boys together. If you joined, you wouldn't
get away from obeying rules, for they had
rules — loose ties, torn blazers — to break was as bad.

ERIC BELL

It was funny how people were different
down to the very ends of their fingers. Take
Eric Bell, who had long fingers so fluent,
fanning out, crinkling up, running in series
up and down the piano, no one could make
music his way, as if your identity's
sort of soaked through your body and how it goes.
You could find no one with his long nose, dark brown
eyes, uncertain look, shy, but still, if it chose,
showed that it knew quite a lot about you, down
to your heart. When he died — TB — was it true
all that body had gone and Eric Bell too?

END-OF-TERM FUN

In the week before end-of-term we could do
all sorts of things. In woodwork we could use old
scraps of wood and make little merchant ships you
painted at home afterwards, could push about
as a fleet, tankers, trawlers, coasters. Were told
how you should play 'Battleships' so throughout
it you could use your intelligence. Miss Moscrop
organized general knowledge quizzes; some things
we were better than she was! Latin would stop;
teams would compete in charades. As teachers, kings,
judges, doctors, some people made you laugh so
much. Was nice that Miss Hicks would call out 'Bravo!'

SCHOOL'S OUT

There goes Vernon, head forward on his racing
bike like an angry goose — he's first out of school
back to what is much more important.. Chasing
each other round a tree the Dent twins forget
the school corridors. First-formers playing 'Who'll
be last to touch the bus-stop?', lost in their bet,
dash like fish between loitering sixths. Couples
show up by stillness, Greenhalgh with his hand flat
on the wall over Eileen's head; Bill straddles
over his cross-bar, Jean twiddles the bell. At
the school gate all are leaving who have left long
ago. Here from the future I join the throng.

VERNON'S WATCH

Vernon's mother had bought him a watch. It went
well with his sleek blond Brylcreemed hair, going right
back as on all the hoardings. He looked a gent
ready to fly with Amy Mollison or
race at Brooklands. He looked just about to light
up a long cigarette, a rich bachelor,
or a film-star like Clark Gable, or to dance,
dressed in long tails, with Ginger Rogers, or chase
after villains like Raffles. So in advance
like this of all of us. He thought it was 'ace'
with his watch to flash sunlight into Holly's
eyes, excite the response of chalk-stick volleys.

VERNON, THE EARLY LEAVER

When we heard of it first from Vernon we just
couldn't believe it. Leaving school? Before his
school certificate? All of us said he must
change his mind. All along Chorley New Road we
had it out with him. Hear him in any quiz
getting it right all the time. Would always be
top in maths, third in physics. To go in for
money too soon! Why couldn't he understand?
I remembered he got five bob each week, more,
Mammy would say, than a boy should. You planned
to have more later. Then, you'd have it to lend.
For those five bobs he's have to pay in the end.

VERNON AND STEVE'S TRICK

Sometimes Vernon and Steve would take some black thread,
fasten a button on to the end of it,
pin it up on the window. You could see it led
secretly over to them. Then they would tap
when the teacher was looking away. I'd sit
waiting like everybody else for the flap
that we wanted him in. Catch me trying
tricks like that! Still it was good. Didn't matter
whether good old MaCarthy set us laughing
with "I've cottoned on to it!" or whether
that young fool got steamed up. He would have to leave.
You'd feel it wasn't wrong of Vernon and Steve.

SEXUAL EDUCATION FROM WALTER

"Tell me, Walter, do tell! Don't keep me waiting!"
"Well, then, a white fluid comes out of the top —"
"Do you mean when it's ...stiff...and it's all shaking?"
"Yes, it's a white fluid." So when Mr. Druce
in the chemistry lesson let wax go plop
into a beaker to demonstrate the use
of the word 'fluid', loose thoughts would come in my
mind. I'd look to see whether Margaret's skirt
had slipped higher so I could peek at her thigh.
And in the art lesson when I saw white paint spurt
from the tube, I'd try to get a blouse view.
I thought: 'Why can't they use things that don't rouse you?'

BRANDED MEMORIES

At the moment the farmer whipped my calves when
chasing us after our game of sheep-rustlers,
a green hawthorn hedge branded itself right then
deep into memory, and the turn into
busy Winter Hey Lane after the terrors
bagpipes and kilt has given me. To undo
such a link is impossible. Where Walter
told me the facts of life, that nobody had,
an indelible photo of the corner
Lord Street and Darley Street. First sight of that bad
girl, the prostitute: dull day, promise of snow,
and the sound of the River Douglas below.

WHAT SHE SHOWED

When that girl, called Joan something, with a funny
name, went up Klondyke with boys and showed them her
betweens, I thought she's ugly and fat. Pity
that is the only way she can get boys to
notice her. All the pretty girls, well, they were
all like honey-pots for Winnie-the-Pooh.
And the boys who'd been up there boasted, said you
were a real cissy, afraid to go and see
what this Joan had to show. I'd think it was true
this was a sight I was missing, but for me
to have that in my memory, stuck like glue,
would be terrible, permanent, like a tattoo.

THE CINDER-SHIFTING MOVEMENT

Dirty jokes would get Steve's laughter going all
day. He would run them around his mouth like
wine or something. He wanted his pals to sprawl
helpless like him again and again, quite crazed
with relief. See them nudge each other and strike
tables and thighs to force themselves from their dazed
state to wobbling again like tops. The 'cinder-
shifting' one time, a movement recommended
for a good copulation, spark to tinder
as far as Steve was concerned. Condescended
to smile, I did, the metaphor neat. Was nice,
though, when later in life, I took the advice.

DIRTY DRAWINGS

When they drew a girl's open legs on the wall
of the Boys', it was only a sort of sharing,
for alone, there's no need to try such a scrawl
(like a word, not a picture, a word used so much
that its image is dead). I'd see girls baring
themselves everywhere: inside a teacup such
bottoms, silverly lined, that rose towards eyes;
and a plum beckoned fingers; raindrop was breast;
any two dots could be nipples, given a size
matching distance between; a lens would suggest
what a willow-leaf would. When the Boys' was poshed
up again, I knew what couldn't be white-washed.

A PURE MIND

On the window was glossy white lettering.
Some had fallen off, leaving WEE where it read
SWEETS. My pals would nudge me into giggling
with them. 'But you can still see where the letters
have been. Look!' I would say. What they saw instead
of the 'Cont.' on the exam page good spellers
couldn't see. What he propped up in his inkwell
was a pencil and two marbles. And a grab
at your fly was to show your shirt-flap. That smell —
it was 'hydrogen sulphide' from the chemmy lab.
From the filth of their jokes I was quite immune.
On the door of the Girls' was a real balloon.

THE WALLASEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOYS

We had Wallasey Grammar School boys and their
teachers evacuated to us. The boys
all seemed gleeful that schoolgirls were always there.
They had not had any at their school. You'd hear
them all giggling with jokes. There was such noise
first in the playground. They all said it was 'gear'
to have girls in your class. And how many
girls had we had up the hillside? Even Steve
found it funny. Answer you hadn't any,
wouldn't believe you, and Mac, he wouldn't leave
it alone. Would be nice, he said, a gear trick
if they showed all their nipples, red with lipstick.

DUDLEY AND BEN

I would let myself look at the nude woman
there in The Water Babies. She was the one
that I gazed at while rubbing away. Often
I would escape to that secret ecstatic
place of naiads and water where there was spun
amorous magic out of bare, aquatic
acrobatics. At school, though, I wouldn't look,
not for a moment, at the postcards Dudley
and Ben brought. While they sniggered in groups, I took
off in the playground somewhere else, for filthy
things like that would drag me down to their den.
Couldn't stand being like that Dudley and Ben.

BEING EXCUSED ASSEMBLY

Roman Catholics didn't go into Hall.
Waiting outside in the corridor until
the time came for the notices, I'd hear all —
pupils and teachers and head — all of then sing,
joining in hymns I didn't know well, with shrill
voices and deep. I knew Mac would be singing
other words (like 'the cuntinence divine') for
I could just see him grinning. 'There's no either-or,
MacDowell!' Plum had said. I watched through the chink
as his mouth made the motions. You had to hide
what you felt if you weren't free to go outside.

AS A CATHOLIC

As a Catholic you didn't swear nor did you
tell dirty jokes, though you couldn't help hearing
them. As I was the only Catholic, how true
that was I couldn't tell, so I didn't swear,
didn't tell dirty jokes. The priest said fearing
God meant you knew he was always near you, there
at your side. Knowing me, all the Protestants
thought it was true about Catholics. And Mammy,
she would always remind me. P'raps in convents
that's what they did. The boys said, 'Here comes Eddie!
Oh, you mustn't tell 'im!' Was Mammy's lesson
to me, all 'cause of Daddy's fancy woman.

A SIGNING OF THE CROSS

Once when Sarah and I went to the Infants
School (we were giving a puppet show), the end
of the afternoon came with prayers. Some moments
all of the children stood in silence, waiting.
Saw them then, at the teacher's nod, all extend
their right arms to the right, as if directing
traffic, holding so still. We, both at a loss,
looked at each other, bewildered. Second nod,
and they began with the Sign of the Cross:
'In the Name of the Father...' They waved to God
with their wide solemn gestures, even august.
All those flat hands extended signed a blind trust.

PROSTITUTE

'She's a prostitute! 'What's that?' 'She lets men,
y' know — do her for money!' I had to see
who it was you could buy into bed, for then
I would know what these nasty women were like
and avoid them, for money wasn't a thing
to be wasted. When I was out on my bike
the next day near the house where men could go in
if they paid, the door opened. I saw lipstick
first ('so common laid on that way on thin
lips' I'd heard Mammy say), and she was so thick
round the hips! Such a hard face! I was so glad
she was ugly. So easy not to be bad!

DANCING AND SUCH

There was dancing. Your legs went walking after
hers, but, just as you did, hers went stepping back.
Those who didn't were bad dancers, and laughter
made them learn. There was Postman's Knock, where kisses
in the dark were just play. 'Are you shy?' A smack
on the lips shut her up. Such pretending is
easy, didn't see why it wasn't easy,
but to kiss and to mean it, that was being shy.
The back row of the stalls was not as sleazy
as I thought as I sat behind on the sly,
hearing giggles and creaks. There were double seats.
Mammy said, 'They're at least not walking the streets.'

BALLROOM-DANCING LESSONS

Had to go to some ballroom-dancing lessons.
How could you get a nice girl if you didn't?
You were told it was part of a gentleman's
talents. Like Fred Astaire, your feet must obey
you. The girl then obeys you. 'An elegant
mastery,' that's what she said. 'Mustn't betray
your uncertainty, even though you feel it."
Felt her stiff corset round her back as she told
you the 'Quick, quick, slow'. Difficult, though, to fit
feet in together. I didn't want to fold
her much closer. I felt I didn't belong,
and her perfume and powder were much too strong.

THE VELETA

When you danced the Veleta, everyone moved
on after twirling around. All like waves, we
took our rhythm and pattern farther and proved
all of us could fit in. But you found each
girl was different. Pity you weren't free —
you had to dance with them all. At last you'd reach
the nice girl was so easy to hold. Others
stiffened as soon as your hand reached round, and your
knees would knock, or their hands were damp, the colours
wrong in their dresses, but they weren't all a bore
when you spoke to them. So, when you bumped a shoe,
made you wonder what they really thought of you.

FIRST LOVE

I remember when Mammy said, 'Isn't there
some girl you like? What about that pretty one?
Her name?' — 'Margaret Edge.' — yes, one of the fair,
Margaret was, so I obeyed Mammy and
fell in love and I spoke, but the hope was gone
(boy in the Upper Sixth). But it seemed to brand
you, for everyone found it funny I chose
her, the real chocolate-box girl. I remember
in a cold autumn twilight, there while I froze
waiting outside her house, for nothing. Over
all that, long ago. Why, then, do I still
find a cold autumn twilight hides a faint thrill?

THE PIANIST'S FINGERS

Selwyn Roberts, I think his name was. There must
be a good reason why I can't remember
it. Was Margaret's boyfriend. Felt I could trust
him with my woe 'cause he told me about her.
Was a pianist, terribly good, player
skilled at Debussy. He was able to stir
up those feelings with 'Clair de Lune'. Seemed quite fair,
somehow, he'd got her. And he'd smile,
would make sidelong remarks — her 'big derrière',
kisses where tongues touched. It was a sort of guile,
sort of boast, but I'd listen, as if to share
in his pianist's fingers her 'derriére'.

DREAM AND WAKE

Those two countries how far apart! In the dark
she undressed in the daylight, wiggled her mount
till it rubbed me against me, unbuttoned stark
heart-ecstatic touch, opened legs wide to catch
all I wished. In the day, she took no account
of the dark. She sat cross-legged. Hands didn't match
hands for passion: they fondled pens. Her leaning
kept her lap closed like scissors. Where tongue touched tongue,
word kept word dumb. One language had no meaning
for another. And yet this room where we clung
close was that one, that house where she came was this,
and that country, where I was taught who to kiss.

VOICES IN THE HEAD

When I found I could hear people's voices right
there in my head, it was fun making them say
at once just what I wanted. I might
make Mr. Piggott, the maths master, say, 'How
very good all your homework is, Wright! You may
miss it this week!' Or I'd see Plum make a bow
on the platform and then hear him recite 'The
Owl and the Pussycat'. Mr. Druce at last
would apologize, finally make right the
marks he knocked off. And then later what surpassed
all, heard Margaret, the lovely and clever,
at last saying she would love me forever.

MARGARET'S COMMENT

Only once did the beautiful Margaret
yield to persuasion. At the Christmas dance, she,
'cause it was Christmas, and my importunate
pleas wore her down, agreed that she would join in
with a group who'd come home a short time with me
(wine and mince pies) in the interval. Chagrin
all the same, though Tchaikovsky One was soft,
slow, on the gramophone, and Daddy's Christmas
lights were dim round the room. The next day, she scoffed,
knowingly, up to my hopeless amorous
tricks. She smiled with a pitying look at the comic
unrequited one. Said, 'Soft lights! Sweet music!'

A CONTRADICTION

Ah, such fun in the talk as we walked back late
after a school society, me pushing
my bike. Welsh girls were witty, I thought. Was great
finding a girl you could laugh with. Her black hair
and red lips were all part of her. Talking
brought you together, they said. You could share
more than snogging. Said she had enjoyed it too:
there at the Crown she said yes to the pictures.
But next day she had talked to her friends. Said, 'You
told someone, didn't you!' Welsh girls were liars,
I thought. Best not to buy them a wedding ring —
but I haven't got rid of that inward sting.

SECOND LOVE

There's the roof of the Great House Barn in winter
moonlight, as crisp in memory as the frost
that it shows. The cold still glare seems to splinter
down the gray slates, on the roof like a witch's
hat. A wicked enchantment that has its cost.
There is my arm around her. Here, then, riches
in my memory. Yet a week later she
would not acknowledge me. I had not kissed her!
Oh what folly! — If only, oh, if only!
Now, though, enchanted still by that moonlight, were
I to be there, I still would not kiss, for fear,
with that act, I would never have got to here.

'DIVORCED!'

'He's divorced and I never knew it!' she said.
'Think of taking us in like that! I feel quite
defiled!' What were 'divorced' and 'defiled' that led
her to speak of her friends in that way? Their house
that before was a castle to me — its height
and its view saying safety; the wind, the grouse
and the beck shouting their welcome with tea
and her fruit-cake, home-made — now was a prison
or an ogre's foul fortress, a sugary
trap that witches had laid. Unwary children
were 'divorced' and 'defiled'. Now a maniac
wind whined menace. Mad grouse cried 'Go back! Go back!'

SIXTH-FORM PRIVATE-JOKE

In the treasure hunt 'Cheese' was an easy clue,
though it puzzled the Senior Master. We kept
on a string a wild piece of Danish Blue
in the sixth-form room. We practised orations
on the merits of mould. Long calculations
on the rate of its travel would take adept
wranglers hours. We debated decay and how
it could be maintained always. It was a pet
and obsession, prisoner and highbrow
caprice. Examinations were planned to get
all the experts defined. They could join the Board
of Fromage, would get to their deserved reward.

THE STUFFED PIKE

Was a pike in a case at school, three feet long,
all shiny, jaws open, hinged like Meccano,
with a threatening bearded gape; like a prong
each fin, and glued upright, and the single eye
with a strong yellow glare, and it seemed to glow
when the electric light was on. Was all dry,
though they'd painted green water-weeds, put a bed
made out of real sand and pebbles. Not alive,
and I'd wonder how much was the really dead
pike. However they tried, couldn't make it dive,
swish round, snap, be the monster of the dark stream,
make it slide like a liner through a moonbeam.

TCHAIKOVSKY'S FOURTH

Was Tchaikovsky's Fourth was where I
started. Was Arthur Greenhalgh played it to me
after school and said Grieg couldn't qualify
next to these trumpets of fate. Wasn't too keen
at the first, hadn't known any symphony.
Soon, as enthusiastic as he had been,
I was thrilling to Destiny's force and to
Russian excitements. Then came neglect, the hate
of its 'sentimentality'. Now I skew
round to another view: I feel it pulsate
with a gothic intensity I know
from that ideal emotion of years ago.

ROMANTIC MOUNTAINS

Oh, the grandeur of hills was human grandeur.
Summits became gigantic with your success,
let you bestow the scope of panorama,
burgeoning fancy of cloud, surprise of mist,
the cliff's decision, on yourself, turn voiceless
solitudes into echoing, prejudiced,
vast, obsequious senates whose presences
raised you and praised you as one of the elect,
let you both in storms and in silences,
blessed with the blue sky, with winds chastised and checked,
reach your mountain achievement, Oh, to compete
(prostituting the beauty) on your own two feet!

'COUNTERACT SMYTHE'

His magnificent climbing-boots — soft-collared
uppers they had, and gleaming nails like new saws,
and of different types; and his voice some standard
public-school; face like a parson's. His new ropes,
bound with green cord, and shiny like plaited straws,
none of what we could afford, beyond our hopes.
In the boat on Llyn Ogwen, Walter rowing,
he in the bow, Captain Cook eyeing the shore,
giving orders about where we were going.
Walter, no seaman, caught a crab with his oar.
'Counteract this side! Counteract that!' Devised a
name for him: 'Counteract Smythe' (after the climber).

THE CAUSES OF LAUGHTER

I discovered two things at Snowdon Ranger
youth hostel. Down in the basement primus stoves
were set up for the self-cookers. No danger
really — the shelves were metal. On our first night,
though, with me as sole cook, in an alcove's
darkness I muffed the igniting. In a fright
at the flames somersaulting out, I then dashed
back up the stairs shouting, 'Fire! Fire!'. What I feared
was explosion. The warden, though, had soon crashed
out the flames with a blanket. A youth leered
at me, said, 'It was a girl, I thought, shouting!' You
can laugh, then, at fear — at boys like girls, too.

FLYING IN THE A.T.C.

In the A.T.C . one of the things I liked
most was a flight over Horwich. No sooner
were up in the air but those miles I'd biked
shrunk to their size on the map. It was the best
map of all, the real thing. There would be Winter
Hill, and there Bolton and Horwich. To the west
was the sea — you could see it at the same time
though down in Horwich you couldn't. How very small
all the houses were, even ours. We could climb
over the Pike in a minute — we'd grown tall
and could see all the streets we had to travel
like a maze it was easy to unravel.

SHOOTING UP A HANGAR

Had a soft sort of face like Errol Flynn this
boy from the public-school ATC. Wouldn't
speak to us. At the meals he would miss
meeting our eyes. Our troops had combined in camp
at the Southport airbase. Not many couldn't
make friends like that. He was a bit of a damp
in the NAAFI. One day we were allowed to
sit in a cockpit while the mechanics worked
on a Typhoon. When Horwich had left (to queue
then for the trainer), suddenly we all jerked
to the roar of a volley. Errol's desire
had been to tear off a cover and press 'Fire!'

RAF INSTRUCTOR

At the RAF Halton base we were taught
how navigation was done. The ATC
arranged courses like that. The instructor brought
maps that had heights all in purple (for night use)
and a neat calculator. His recipe,
certain to work, for stopping minds slipping loose,
was to make dirty jokes like 'Do be careful
writing C-O-N-T at the top of your
page!', and dealing with any 'foolish prattle'
by a knock on the head that was really sore
with a flexible xylophone stick. Was grim.
Though I learned navigation, I hated him.

AUGUST 6th 1945

Was at R.A.F. Halton in bright sunlight.
All of us A.T.C. cadets were outside.
You were waiting for buses. Up to the height,
wooded and rich, of the Chilterns, ranged your eyes
as they looked for the wild where the free could hide
safe from the tannoys and clocks, there where the skies
were as open as holidays, and cumulus
clouds, they went sailing in easiest peace from
west to east. He came running, shouting to us,
waving a Daily Sketch. 'Dropped an "atom bomb"
on Hiroshima!' A day for celebration!
My birthday, the Feast of the Transfiguration.

DRILL

In the ATC uniform by the right
we dressed, over one's shoulder checking one's cheek
was in line, turned. Our boots had to be so bright
that the officer saw only himself in
them. The straighter and stiller, never oblique,
never speaking, ensured that in time you'd win
voice and action to turn and march the platoon
on your own. There were stripes and bands and golden
ropings proving that liberty to dragoon
the whole troop, to take them round the square again
and again. Victory Day came, proof of the will
to be free that had donned such dress and such drill.

THE FROZEN SNOW ON A CHORLEY NEW ROAD PAVEMENT

There was one night or other stuck in my mind.
Kept coming round for no reason. Walking back
from the ATC late, found it such a bind
trying to stay upright, because the pavement
was uneven with the snow, a stone-frozen track
jerking your feet to slip over adamant
hollows, snags, metal bosses of ice, the prints
left in the slush in the daytime, now rigid
as a giant rasp. Tripped up by knobs and dints,
staggered to stagger again, to slip and skid,
always fearful the ground would give you a blow
as you'd driven yourself hard down on the snow.

WAKING UP, NOT KNOWING WHO I WAS

I woke up without knowing either day or
time. It was fun not to ask my memory
for a clue. It was difficult to do for
there I was trying to be me without knowing
who I was. I could lose my identity
only if I could forget what was going
on inside that would fix what I'd been up to,
what I was thinking of doing. Both the nice
and the nasty were gone. It was nice to do
nothing about them, not to have to think twice
every minute about my next week or last —
in a trice I was present, back in the past.

NOTHING

Was a time when Walter and I had a
strange thought: Just why was there anything, even
an almighty god? You couldn't add a
looker-on, thinking that there was nothing there.
There'd be nothing at all, not just no Bolton,
no smoky Lancashire, no Earth, no air,
and no Moon and no Sun, for there wouldn't be
even a vacuum. Couldn't be only
darkness floating around with nothing to see —
darkness and seeing were still part of cosy
real life. Time would stop, too. Then our minds would spin —
Just what was this big fraud we were caught up in?

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