Mods in parkas

Riding vespas

With a battery of lights and whiplash aerials

One with a Colonel Bogey horn

Ride up and down our road

In the diminishing dusk

It’s hot and I’m not sleepy

The night is muggy and steamy

One of them the newsagents son

A year or two later died

In a road crash

Leaving his parents with two younger brothers

 

It was the kind of summer

That was so hot the tar melted

Then after an almighty downpour

And steam would rise off the pavement and the road

In hypnotic clouds

Like a Turkish bath

These were summers that were spent at

Every opportunity in the lido at the bottom of our road

On the edge of the park

Running home with wet trunks

And just a towel nearly dry

Near that place were the mods hung out at night

The kiosk on the corner

Ice pops, ice cream and cigarettes

Chocolate melting in the sun

The pitch and putt

Where one day with one mighty swipe

A club flew out of my hot sweaty hands

Narrowly missing passing strollers

Soaking up a hazy lazy sun

 

These summers of multicoloured lollies

Joy and childish folly

It was summers such as this

That was as sticky as hot treacle pudding

When t shirts and vests

Were peeled from skin

Like a scabby plaster

When a boy thought each summer would be endless

Suspended in time until a boy became a lad

Who in turn became a man

And the world turned from summer in to autumn