There used to be a school

There used to be a school

Children of the village attended

From age five until fifteen

Unless they passed the eleven plus

Grammar school was a different world

My brother used to go

With a uniform and satchel

Form tutors and a cricket club

Shrunk to fit whilst worn,

Lying in a bath of cold blue water

The children are bused out now

To bigger schools in other places

In dreams I still see faces

Of kids I used to know

One came up to me the other day

A shaved head and facial tattoos

He looked older

So did I

He was twice my size

Asked if I remembered beating on him

Because he hit my brother

I said I did

But probably couldn’t do it now

He laughed, thank god

And we passed some time until he

Invited me home for dinner

I remembered

How he used to live

Thirteen kids in a two bedroom house

Wiped his nose on his sleeve

And suggested ‘maybe next time.’

Waiting for the train

Eating a cold meat pie

Wondering why my father

Never said I made him proud

No matter what I did

I would never have known that he was

If an old mate hadn’t let it slip

One night in the pub

When I had taken dad out for a drink

Once his legs had gone

He struggled to make it up the hill

And back again

Without falling

Even though he rarely drank

More than two pints of Guinness

It might have been the brandy and lime chasers

For many years

He would eat raw onions

To disguise the smell of alcohol

Thought my mum wouldn’t know

She did

Even though he joked

He had only the ‘one’ glass

Trains have a way

Of breaking into the present

All hiss and steam

Even when they are electric

Behemoths disgorging themselves

Of parasites

Before accepting another batch

To scratch an itch

That keeps an engine ticking over

They built houses on the old school site

A junior school on the playing field

Where I scored a wonder goal

Became a tri-schools 440 yard champion

Where have all the people come from

Now that the pits have closed

The shipyard’s gone

What futures have they

When they stop building cars

As the miles slip by

In a blur of empty factories

Green fields and new towns

I wonder why I went back

To a place I used to know

When there is nothing left

Of me to see

But an echo of beginnings

The beginnings of an end