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Our day out

Between kicking a ball and vandalizing boredom, I swung around lamp posts

and mouthed my maisonette backdrop around the block.

I would burn spiders with a magnifying glass, a clear conscience, and a smile.

 

But in a few years - the estate molding me would be bulldozed,

thought so bad by Thatcher’s Britain, to not be fit

for the working class. An irony mocked

by the language of laughter, too cracked to reach the eyes.

 

Adults knowing best would be glad to get out and escape this,

but to us kids who never knew better; this place was a playground paradise.

I wouldn’t have wanted to fight anywhere else!

But like I said - we didn’t know better.

 

In the years to come we would move into real housing

and I would feel lost. Eventually

I would become civilized

and afraid -

just like everybody else.

 

 

 

◄ ThePoetry Spoke- April and your poetry- with Guests Kevin McMahon, Yarbo and Laura James

Right Thinking ►

Comments

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Chris Co

Fri 4th May 2012 11:21

Hi Ray,

Our Day Out...as capitalised... was a play wriiten in the late 1970s by Willy Russell about deprived kids growing up in deprived Liverpool. The play was recorded for television in the 1980s. This was the time I was growing up in the same city on one of its poorer housing estates.

The play starts out as a coach trip, but the plot darkens when it becomes obvious that the kids from the back streets of Liverpool, have little to no hope in terms of a future. The picture is painted that they are no-hopers; that a day trip is as good as anything is going to get for them...they'll soon be back on the estates.

In one scene at a zoo there is a bear in a bear pit.

The scene starts off when one of the kids asks a teacher if the bear could kill you. The teacher replies saying “Well why do you think it kept in a pit?” Another kid joins the conversation by saying “ I think it is cruel don’t you?” The teacher replies to him saying that it is not if it is treated well. “No. Not if its treated well. And don’t forget it was born in captivity so it won’t know any other sort of life”


A kid replies "It must know other ways of living, sir. Y’know, free, like the way people have stopped it livin’. It only kills people cos it’s trapped an’ people are looking at it. If it was free it wouldn’t bother people at all.”

The kids like the bear are trapped. The kids can't escape a poor background in Liverpool and likely can't escape a poor future as a result.n The bear will be in the pit for all his life, like the kids In Liverpool, and will be treated the same way, and will be living the same way for the rest of their life. The bear doesn’t learn anything good other than, try and scare humans off, when they are being cruel, the kids don't learn much different.

It also includes the idea that the bear if placed in better surroundings would still be just as dangerous, still a bear. The analogy is clear; you can take the boy out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the boy. In other words there is no point in giving these kids (kids like these) a chance or a better home...they'll just be what they are anyway. (how more wrong could an idea be?)

I saw the kids that grew up before me on the estates, I saw that half of them had zero education. I was very fortunate to have very well educated parents in the home. But I saw a disproportionate number of kids from the estates were in remedial classes...like the play. I saw how the estates promoted the idea that school and homework was for losers and that it didn't matter anyway as there was no hope academically. I also saw that a lot of bad lads turned out...not surprising!

Fighting was a daily routine on the estates, but you could and would get battered if all the kids thought you were a 'suck'...which means someone pushing to do well at school. The pressure was to conform and that conformity was, play out late, play footy, jump across bin sheds. Play hideO on the roof of the old people's home, break into houses or the local school, and most importantly mess about in school.

I got to escape this background when Michael Heseltine came to Liverpool as Tory minister and they found the conditions...to not be fit to live in. The estates were knocked down and we moved... as I said into real housing. Oddly for the first couple of years I didn't know what to do without having bin sheds to jump across (I know that might sound quite mad) and green space and back gardens were confusing lol. Back on point...

You might not be able to take bears out of bear pits, but you can take children out of deprived conditions and things can as a result...improve greatly.

Our day out for me was in getting OUT and not suffering a future like those before me on that estate or like kids in that play.

P.S

I can see what your saying about the line changes, but I like the sprung rhythm that currently exists. That said, I have added two commas and a semicolon. Hopefully this makes for superior sonic units, whilst retaining meaning and rhythm. Thoughts appreciated...I always do consider tweeks.

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Ray Miller

Thu 3rd May 2012 15:46

Nice poem. I liked
I wouldn’t have wanted to fight anywhere else!
Ending is good, too.
Odd choice of title, I thought. Implies holidays, to me anyhow.Some of the lines are a bit long e.g. I'd end the first one at boredom.
To get out and escape - same thing?

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Chris Co

Thu 3rd May 2012 15:34

Hi Isobel,

I know what you mean about scale and walking everywhere, life did indeed feel more contained back then. I can't say with any certainty why I felt as I did.

I think it might have stemmed from teenage conciousness (finding awareness) and the feeling of having something to lose having gained a real home.

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Isobel

Wed 2nd May 2012 21:14

When I go back to the road I was born and grew up in (which isn't far), I'm struck by how small it all is. Back then it seemed such a big, big place. Perhaps that's because we walked everywhere and the whole of life was contained in a much smaller place.

I enjoyed your poem Chris - it stirred feelings for me. I wonder if the fear you felt in the real housing isn't tied up more to the fact that you became an adult, you grew up to life and all its realities.

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Chris Co

Mon 30th Apr 2012 18:24

Very poetically put Gus,
Thx for reading and the considered thoughts...glad you like the piece.

Best

Chris

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Gus Jonsson

Sun 29th Apr 2012 15:39

Lovely, nostalgic merry go round a memories ride, your reference to never going back belongs to taking the who you are now, by virtue of your status and reputation, to the past... and starting again... it seldom ever works.

Memories should be liken, in my opinion to a shoe box of yellowing and faded family snaps...letters and the lingering scent of a pressed flower held safe between the pages of time until reopened again, which enables the minds eye to open wide and see the past clearly once more.

Great piece of writing Chris

Hope to see you soon.

Gus

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Chris Co

Sat 28th Apr 2012 13:33

Thx for reading and commenting guys- appreciated.

Nice to see people have got a real feel for where this one was coming from. You're quite right in your choice of the word bereft Graham, that is very much the feeling I had.

This idea of what is now is not what was and yet still is in the mind...that is exactly what I was trying for. Thx M.C and Harry as well as Graham for understanding this.

I can go back to the location and I can go back to that time, one being a physical journey that does little for me, the other being a journey through memories and time that has a real impact.

Despite my confused nostalgia and the fact that as a child I liked the place; I do recognise the importance of leaving. So many kids that went on to spend their teenage years growing up in that place had very bleak outlooks and attitudes.

Part of becoming civilized is to become afraid. Afterall, by having an investment in life, in the future; you have something to lose.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be - that is a great line M.C. Hey Harry- Scottie road...so many poems can be written about that road.

They say never go back don't they...does that include the minds eye?

Chris

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Harry O'Neill

Fri 27th Apr 2012 21:46


Vivid memories of moving from Scotland road to Halewood (and I was growed up by then)...I hated it!

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M.C. Newberry

Thu 26th Apr 2012 11:57

Wasn't it novelist Frank Norman who wrote
"Nostalgia ain't what it used to be"?
A child's eye-view is like looking through a
telescope the wrong way round.
My childhood was spent in a seaside town that bore the bomb-sites of Hitler's war...another
"paradise" for play and the imagination. But
when I return there now, it is another place entirely - and not just because it has been
repaired and "improved". Chris Co's words remind us that such things are in the mind as much as anything else.

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Graham Sherwood

Thu 26th Apr 2012 11:23

An interesting piece this Chris. I recently revisited somewhere from my childhood and felt really sad at the state of the place, not nostalgic at all. The real quality of this is the mind's eye feeling that you have that can't be replaced by reality. A lovely bereft feeling that can't be put right. Nicely worded.

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