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 New year 2017. Today I walked a while around my old town. I don't get here much. From the shuttered shops and empty spaces it seems, like many places, they are closing it down. So far they have taken everything up to the knees. As I sat drinking a coffee waiting for a phone to be mended I thought back to my childhood and the dirty, busy, mysterious town this once was. OK it wasn’t so great, When the winter damp rolled The chimney smoke over and over Till the days were a long twilight of sulphur mist, In which strangers, shuffling and apologetic Materialised at your side, hunched a little lower, Then disappeared. And in the same moment of trickery An entire trolley bus, sparking and clattering, became visible Carrying sombre mannequins in hats and scarves, In a long retreat Before vanishing to a muffled tolling bell. When my mother taking our hands, And telling us not to breathe Would pull us home Under the iron bridge smouldering in a fiery glow from A steam train as it slowed and sighed above Onto an empty platform Adding its underbreath to the stinking mustard air. Past the strange shop windows Lonely and lost in a melancholy air; Along the looming giants of furious Plane trees Into the serious dark of the sidestreet To the haunted nervous places Past the ‘rec’, the bowling club and the brook, Invisble now Lingering only it seems in the young memory of summer. Back to home to the worried dog and the cold, cleaner air Watching the fire kindle in the grate Pressing my cheek against the tears on the window I would watch till my still dark father would return. (c) Steve Bonham 2017
4 Comments
Natalia Wieczork
3/1/2017 12:40:42 pm
This really stuck a cord with me. I recall the thick smog and the dark street where I waited for the bus with my mum. Torches glowing dim in the air. I loved Derby how it was. I think it's a shambles of poor planning now, a town ruined.
Judith Crosse
8/1/2017 11:57:41 am
I revisited the town of my early childhood recently. Shops were shrunk or boarded up and the Victorian school I attended had been demolished, a flat space surrounded by hoardings.
Bob Croson
12/1/2017 07:37:10 am
Recently was reminded of the great smog and Winston Churchills role in that. Together with your memories, Steve, I had a flashback to a long forgotten memory. As a wee boy I remember one horrific day when I first understood my father was not a well man. I had staggered home from school in the smog, and then was waiting for my dad. He worked at a bakery in town and caught the bus home normally. In the smog the buses were cancelled. I remember my growing fear as dad hadn't returned, and tearfully looking out the window to the wall of smog. After what seemed an age, he eventually returned from walking home, staggered through the door, and collapsed in a heap. He never went back to full time work from that moment.
Steve
16/1/2017 10:49:18 am
Hi Bob - that is such a moving and haunting story and uncanny its mirroring of memory. Do you still write - I remember your books Leave a Reply. |
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