Brookland House
Throughout February, March and April 2013, Mike Church led a series of creative poetry sessions with residents of Brookland House, Pontypool.
Brookland House is a retirement facility managed by Bron Afon Community Housing. Comprised of twenty five flats and bungalows it was built in 1980 and offers a range of weekly social activities as well as resident management staff and a community alarm service.
Residents enjoyed relaxed poetry workshops and conversations during a two hour session. The poems have been compiled as a booklet and distributed as a celebration of the work produced.
Poems:
Books
If there’s not five murders in the first chapter
It’s not worth reading
I like a good murder
What are these fifty shades of grey?
Is it a decent story?
A family story?
The young don’t have time to read today
What happened to Enid Blyton?
The faraway trees
The generation missed
Losing their childhood
And growing up quick
I remember being Jo
Out of Little Women
Books help you use what’s upstairs
Books galore
We want some more
Even if the wife’s giving birth
The husband could be stuck in the books
While the baby’s stuck in the womb
Imagination running wild
Pass it on
And go 20,000 leagues under the sea
There were so few books to be had
I cried over Black Beauty
And cry over the children who don’t read
But remember if there are not five murders in the first chapter
It’s not worth reading!
Growing Old By Numbers
I don’t like this growing old
I never wanted to be 80
Don’t flatter me now
You can’t climb trees when you get on
Is 70 still a young girl?
We used to climb walls
We were skinny and light
But I don’t like this growing old
I never wanted to be 80
If I just had a good pair of legs
Some people grow old at 40
When they’re only starting off
And some were down the pit at 7
I never wanted to be 80
I don’t like this growing old
Leave me where I am
I’m not going to bed just yet
Raging at the light
And just worn out
Hard work never killed anyone
Losing our independence
Never bothering to look up at aeroplanes anymore
Lucky with families
And remembering 58
When I thought that was old
Times change
I change
I don’t like this growing old
I never wanted to be 80
Don’t flatter me now
Maybe I’ll pop to Disneyland
Legacy
Thatcher the milk snatcher’s gone
So let me see
How will people remember me?
For kindness I hope
Or running down a slope
With a sense of humour to laugh it off
A nugget of me in all the children
Sending the song round
About the little bunny sleeping
And keeping it going
We all leave a bit behind
An echo
A four month old talking on the phone
It’s them
It’s us
It’s how they’ll remember me
As Bampi’s and Bopa’s
In a family
A future
A talent
Be it knitting
Patterns of Donald Duck
Or scarecrows
Knitting children to create a dynasty
Shopping or travelling
Or telling tales
Singing songs of sunshine
All the way
Thatcher the milk snatcher’s gone
So let me see
How will people remember me?
With kindness I hope
The Door
Will you open the door
Wondering what’s behind
Maybe it’s Tutenkamen’s tomb
Or just a cup of tea
Maybe it’s me
Or a rabbit sandwich
Will you open the door to find out?
It could be the excitement of Christmas
Maybe it’s children playing
Or the final curtain moving from side to side
My mum and dad at number 23
The front room with a lit fire
A barrel of elderberry wine
Open the door
No you do it
Open the door
It maybe Lena with a glass
Or Billy Cleaver himself
It maybe the threat of the penny cane
Or the look of a disappointed father
It may be a polished front room
Or someone too young to remember
It maybe the cake on Sunday
Or an ice cream for those that are good
A rasher of bacon and a pennorth of chips
A cup half empty or a cup half full
It may be the scrumps
Or a cup of Oxo with sugar and milk
Go on open that door
And watch the memories tumble out.
What It Means To Be Posh
What it means to be posh
Pretty cups and saucers
Plenty of money
Putting the side on
When girls went off to service and
Came back a bit swanky
Talking like the English
Talking like Nancy
Having clean white socks up to your knee
Meticulously turned out
With a clean pair of knickers every day
And fancy cakes on a trolley
Where the top shelf was the dearest
A tin of Welsh cakes up to London
Or banana sandwiches in school
What it means to be posh
Would I want to be posh?
No they never had the friends we had
And we all stuck together
I Remember
I remember the hooter sounding
When it was funny to be in the house without your mother
Never going outside Newport when we were kids
Now the world has grown so small
‘Mam what time is tea?’
Was the cry then as it is now
I remember the Ovaltini’s,
Dick Barton and the journey into space.
I remember our first radio
We weren’t allowed to touch it.
I remember the pit disaster in Durham
And others before and after,
I remember the King abdicated
And he’d been through Crumlin
And met the miners
The only time my father took a day off work
There were three Kings in one year
Coronation mugs thrown out eventually
I remember
I remember
Street parties
You can’t just watch without doing anything
I remember my sister in domestic service
My brother meeting me in London in uniform
Wanting to see the tower
The man in black telling stories
Running home from the pictures
It couldn’t be missed
I remember
Without memories you’re nothing
Sitting down and thinking back
Looking back at photo’s and remembering
Because I remember
I remember
And we should all remember
Nonsense Love
You’ve broken my heart
So now we must part
You behaved like a hog
Treated me like a dog
First you went with Mary
And took off to marry
At the cookhouse store
You always wanted more
You were Jekyll and Hide
For any would-be bride
Every night I cry and weep
And say goodbye to sleep
You were my lifetime nightmare
Leaving me without a care
So I’ll forget about you
And start life anew
Finishing this awful verse
Before things get any worse!
A Recipe for Life
Start with your whole hearted self
Add some sharing, caring, hard wearing sweetness
Then half a pound of kindness
And a pinch of happiness
Tip in some beer and martini for comfort
And then add one single teardrop
You’ll need to put in a decent dollop of looking at yourself
And a giant slice of Peter Pan
Top this with a measure of luck
Bake for twenty, fifty or eighty years
And then
Just get on with it
Schooldays
I used to mutch, mitch, bunk off or just miss days
And I got there through a horses field
Caned on the hand and on the back of the legs
And kept on the left hand side of the corridor.
My favourite lesson was playtime
Jonny Thatcher would hold Miss’s bloomers
And we’d be in our green uniforms
With a green and white sash for the best.
Berets and caps
Panama hats and badges
Caught without your hat
And there’d be trouble
Dipping hair plaits in ink wells
Cod liver oil and orange juice
Wonderful infants
Acting out Boudicca
Singing competitions and passing exams
Cookery schools and fruit salads
Custard tarts and baked tomatoes
Families that didn’t know how to eat
‘But then you’re not like you sister are you?’
Labelled as from the big family
How do people get babies?
To find out you had to work out how the frog did it
Or you’d end up as a ‘pro’
Not the queen of your own body
Don’t be as common as muck
Stay at school and get what you can
Don’t mitch, mutch, bunk off or just miss days
Or you might end up like us…
The Suitcase
Go and open the suitcase
Inside you might find
A collection of postcards from around the world
Maybe there’ll be a fairy from a tree
Go on open the suitcase
Maybe you’ll find some going away clothes
Or love letters
Or perhaps an injured swan
Go on open the suitcase
Maybe inside will be
Your first memory
Or the keys to your heart
Maybe there’ll be
All the illness of the world
Or just a jar of marmalade
Go on open the suitcase maybe you’ll find
Someone’s psoriasis packed away forever
Maybe there’ll be 500 cigarettes and a bottle of whisky
Maybe there will be
Conjunctivitis in a child
Or a rasher of wind and a fried snowball
Go on open the suitcase
Maybe you’ll find
Scarlet fever
Or kippers and jam
Or scab and matter custard and green snot pie!
Go on open the suitcase
Maybe you’ll find
All your secrets
Or your Bible
Or a map to find your way back
Or just a smelly sock
Go on open that suitcase
You want to know what’s in there
You’re curious
You want to find out
No!
Don’t’ open that suitcase
It’s not your property
And it may be more trouble than it’s worth
The Kingdom of Dust
The dust
The dust
My kingdom
Has the dust
It must be
The drilling
The painters milling
It must be the 50 shades of green
Orange doors to be seen
It might be grey it might be sage
But Colin the painter’s taking an age
No heating
Not even a light up the stair
Tripping over, it’s just not fair
Feeling for keyholes
Is this Calcutta?
I wanted toothpaste
But found it was butter!!
Next thing I know
I was in bed for a week
Goodness me the year’s been bleak
The dust, the dust
My kingdom has the dust
Back In The Day
Back in the day
You could walk the streets
There were skipping ropes and rounders
Hopscotch and hoops
There was proper freedom
Back in the day
There were games like ‘Kingie’ and ‘Queenie’
We’d play three ball against the wall
Back in the day
We had whipping tops and marbles
And sometimes
The ones with the prettiest top could go first
That was back in the day
When left handers had to be right handers
And we used to knit and crochet
Sometimes we didn’t’ have childhood at all
It was straight to service
Or shopping
Or domestic chores
Or we were in the house listening to the wireless
There’d be 10 woodbines and a pint of beer
There’d be reading a good book and a cup of tea
Back in the day
When cinema audiences would applaud those in uniform
And we’d swap rations in the pub
Buying wool by the pound
And getting things on tick
When things were put away
And you could take it all and pay later
Back in the day
When half a crown was a decent bit of money
We’d go to the same shoe shops and they’d know what we want
When dolls and prams
And desks and chairs were favourite toys
And we all wore Sunday best
Back in the day
The Ponty way
And there wasn’t a Play Station or Computer in sight
Back in the day….
What Makes A Community?
Where’s our community gone?
Nobody knows neighbours anymore
Community used to mean
If anyone was ill you’d have a house full
With a ‘Can I do this?’ or ‘Can I do that?’
If your milk was on the doorstep after 9am
Someone would knock with a friendly ‘Everything alright?’
We knew what community meant
But where have all the milkman gone?
Our favourite phrase was:
‘Let’s go in and have a cup of tea’
And the men would stand on the corner
At the ‘Hallelujah Lamppost’
And we’d be washing wellies to be out of the way at times of birth
The pits pulled people together
We knew what community used to mean
We didn’t need phones and facebook
If we had thruppence for looking after children
We were in our oils
Pushing prams up snail creep
And then you could leave a child behind in their pushchair
Without fear of social workers knocking your door
We’d all make toffee apples together
And, like them, we’d stick together
Through thick and thin
And you couldn’t cheek the old people
You’d wring out your clothes and your tears
But if you cried you wouldn’t be able to go again
Neighbours were helpful then
They’d take you to school
And even take you in to live
But you might get the odd tap from a wooden spoon
Where’s our sense of community gone?
Nobody knows their neighbours anymore
But we know
We know
What community used to mean
How to choose the perfect man
Make sure they always address your father
As ‘Mr this’ or ‘Mr that’
No first names please
Make sure they are not a lovechild themselves
And don’t accept anyone who can jive
Dancing is very dangerous
Watch what they say and what they do
Watch out for day trips and going to the pictures
And don’t take the first man who waits for you outside your gate
Don’t take someone for a bet on who’s had the most dates
Don’t marry someone from a big family
Do everything you can to annoy the man
Then see if they stick with it!
And most of all
Look for a decent pair of eyes
And marry someone you can cwtch up to in the dark
And sing Incy Wincy Spider!
