As well as resolutions, New Year is also a time for confessions; this is one of mine.
Of the working classes losing their inhibitions
On holiday in Britain in the post-war years,
With sound recordings of laughter and tears;
And reconstructions of packed and sandy beaches
Where tans were the colour of damaged peaches.
In one room I found a mock beach of striped deckchairs
On which mums and dads banished their ordinary cares,
And looked squint-eyed towards the dripping sun
As they wrote out their postcards with a sense of fun,
And left fast-fading footprints on hot, wet sand
While bending an ear towards the distant bandstand.
My dead parents had been stalwarts of flatcap Morecambe,
Swore by its salubrious air and didn't give a damn
About its madcap naughty neighbour, Blackpool,
The last resort, they thought, for the sinner and the fool;
And so when no-one was looking, as a kind of epitaph,
I left a new exhibit: their portraits in a holiday photograph.
Chris Fernie, 2007
Poetry by Chris Fernie
Read 560 times
Written on 2007-01-03 at 20:57
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The museum was showing interactive exhibitionsOf the working classes losing their inhibitions
On holiday in Britain in the post-war years,
With sound recordings of laughter and tears;
And reconstructions of packed and sandy beaches
Where tans were the colour of damaged peaches.
In one room I found a mock beach of striped deckchairs
On which mums and dads banished their ordinary cares,
And looked squint-eyed towards the dripping sun
As they wrote out their postcards with a sense of fun,
And left fast-fading footprints on hot, wet sand
While bending an ear towards the distant bandstand.
My dead parents had been stalwarts of flatcap Morecambe,
Swore by its salubrious air and didn't give a damn
About its madcap naughty neighbour, Blackpool,
The last resort, they thought, for the sinner and the fool;
And so when no-one was looking, as a kind of epitaph,
I left a new exhibit: their portraits in a holiday photograph.
Chris Fernie, 2007
Poetry by Chris Fernie
Read 560 times
Written on 2007-01-03 at 20:57
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
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Kathy Lockhart |
