When we were small

When we were small

Everything seemed bigger

But the world

Which seemed to exist in and out

Of the imagination

At the end of the street

The bottom of the garden

The Queen lived in London

Which was either miles away

Or just around the corner

All cities looked the same

From the ground up

A bustle of activity

The smell of money

The taste of success

Seeping out from tall buildings

With enormous doors

Liveried men wearing top hats

Welcoming couples

With matching luggage

Television changed the parameters

People played chess

With strangers

On tables set up for just

Such a purpose

Young musicians

Fresh from the conservatoire

Gave a Bach recital

On the embankment

Next to Cleopatra’s needle

Whilst codebreakers

Passed information

Wrapped in old newspapers

Or in rolled up notes

Wedged between the legs

Of a park bench

How many times have you seen

Somebody famous shopping in Hamleys

They close it up

In real life

There are no large classrooms

The chairs are barely

Large enough for sitting

Desks are dainty little things

Only fit for toddlers

How did the teacher ever miss

A trick

Carol Smith had her pigtails

Tied to the back of her chair

She cried when she stood up

And it clattered on to her legs

But it was the humiliation

That stung

It was always Brian

The big guy with the DA haircut

Which went out of style overnight

When ‘She Loves you’

Hit the top.

His number was up

When the pit closed down

Everything was in black and white

Until it wasn’t

The world is always smaller

As a retrospective

When we begin to slow

After it becomes a choice

As we become world weary

Age withers the capacity

For cutting it down to size

Everything looks bigger

From the ground up

It is both closer than facetime

And further than touchscreen

It might as well be fiction

When the truth

Of what we see

Is always rendered through

The prism of somebody else's

Pixelated understanding

Of a life lived

In the aftermath of real time.