Introduction
The Hengrove Poems
To the Memory of Marjorie Moreton
and for the Ninetieth Birthday of William James Fox
In May, 2000, I visited my father in Bristol, England. He was still living in the house where I had spent my adolescence (the house where I'd been born and spent my childhood was on the next street—we were not a restless family). I'd been over to see him the previous two years and each time was excited by the evenings we'd spend talking about his past. As a boy I had ignored stories of his childhood and life in the war; our recent discussions, though, were very different. Now I was eager to listen. But there was a problem: despite all my enthusiasm and interest, when I returned to Canada all I had to hold on to, to remind me of what we had talked about, were a few notes and they soon lost their life. So when I went over in May 2000 I took a small tape recorder with me and in the evenings while we were drinking cans of bitter from the off-license Down the Hill, I questioned him about what I had studiously ignored as a boy, and recorded what he said. This time, when I returned home I knew I had our discussions on hand. But "knowing that" wasn't adequate, so I transcribed them, in order to "know what."
The act of working word by word on what he'd said and sometimes syllable by syllable made me especially aware of what he had said and of how he had said it. I was amazed. Nothing dramatic had happened to our family since dad had got a trial for Bristol Boys in 1930. Here, in the transcription I saw descriptions of small events whose drama I had never recognized, and in our small neighbourhood, too. They held together like the doughboys floating in mum's stews. I wanted to save them and share them with anyone else who might be interested. So I experimented, by setting them out as individual items and then as "found poems." Isolating the events, as these typographical and rhythmic manipulations did, threw the dignity of the actions, thoughts and attitudes expressed into relief, drawing my attention even more to details I hadn't noticed.
I sorted them into a sort of chronological arrangement and read them aloud. Somebody not coming form this era or district might have difficulty placing them, I thought; they needed some sort of frame. My first plan was to introduce each poem with a description of the places they were written about, or where dad was sitting as he talked. But as I set about preparing the descriptions, what dominated my thoughts were my own memories of the places he spoke about. While places in Hengrove, Knowle and Bedminster were the setting for the events of the war he spoke about, I was gripped by the places and the small dramatic episodes I myself associated with them a little later as a young children war was just something we used to frighten ourselves with in the school playground. Our neighbourhood gained a life I'd never been aware of before.
I've always been very conscious of the very small area of Bristol where I was brought up, and seen from two perspectives it gained a sort of independent existence I'd never thought possible. I found this very satisfying since when I was young I was very resentful that no one had ever heard of Hengrove whenever I told them where I lived. But people populated the places we talk about in these poems, people whom I could not dissociate from the places, as I realized when the formal and informal names of family found their way into my framing pieces. (I keep their names at the risk of sounding sentimental.) Places and people were the experience. They came to life again in my head as I was writing, and are still alive, I hope, in these poems, as alive as the hens scratching about in the Canadian snow I see now as I write this introduction.
Barry Fox, March 2005, Upper Falmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Bill Fox had many jobs but during the war he was a "tool and cutter grinder" at the Bristol Aeroplane Company, far away on the other side of the city, repairing and sharpening the tools of mechanics who made the aeroplanes. Our family lived in Petherton Gardens during the war. Later we moved to Dennor Park.
Barry Fox went to Petherton Road Infants School and then Tyning Junior Mixed School . He was a seconder in the 256th Christ Church Wolf Cub Pack and loved to watch the speedway up at the dog track. In 1960 he had a poem published in the Western Daily Press (did Tom Stoppard selct ir for the editor?), later one in the Sheffield Telegraph. The Times Literary Supplement said he was an angry young man but it wasn't always clear what he was angry about. Later he became a teacher and went to live in Canada.
Footnotes
[1] The Bristol Aeroplane Company [2] The Bristol Aeroplane Company at Filton on the other side of Bristol made airplanes for the war. [3] Christ Church Hall. [4] Queen Elizabeth's Hospital was ( and is) an old grammar school founded in the sixteenth century. The yellow stockings were part of the school uniform. [5] Bristol City was the football team supported by everyone from Bedminster. Its ground was called "The City Ground." [6] The Pink 'Un was the Saturday evening paper from the Evening World. It was filled with Saturday's sports news, local and national. It was originally printed on pink paper. [7] Ashton and Bedminster are old districts of Bristol, both with a strong sense of local identity.
Where's Hengrove?
They both scrathced at one time, in their own ways.
by William and Barry Fox
Poems for two voices
about an unknown part of Bristol
before, during and after WWII
You can read these poems in sequence by scrolling down. To choose individual poems, click on the name of the poem from the list below.
3 Establishing the Provenance: Broad Walk, Knowle
8 Southsea
10 When I Went to Join Up First
12 Petherton Gardens: After an Air Raid
13 The Irises
15 Overhead Bombers in East Street, Bedminster
16 Guarding Whitchurch Aerodrome
18 Arresting a Man in Cadogan Road
19 Cadogan Road and the Stream on Airport Road
20 Trying to Sign Up the Second Time
22 Have My Rifle, He's a Good One
25 The Scores in the Evening Post
28 Young Drunk Pilots at the City’s Ground
32 The Pond Where They Built the New School
1. Gathering the Facts
So here I am, back at Number 25,
On my third visit in three years,
And sitting on the couch I left behind
When we moved off to another world
A third of a century before.
This time I’ll catch the past, capture the shots
Of sixty years ago, as my father
Talks and I record on tape. For my whole
Childhood and each recent year, my memory’s
Failed to clasp, to hold, what he saw
For more than a few heightened months.
And his provides less detail every year.
I switch on the machine, fear he’ll dry up,
Just as his mother did, when, as a kid
With a never-before heard-of machine
I recorded and played back what she’d just said
About a neighbour, certain that the whole
Of Bedminster heard what she'd just said.
No need to worry. He took it as a pleasant
Evening in, to talk beside the new
Gas fire. A bit slower than he used to be,
But solid still, he spoke, always deferring
To some unseen, independent listener
Who might perhaps one day see it all.
There was a man came round Bedminster
Sunday lunchtime. My mother always
Referred to him as Dirty Jack.
And all the neighbours, because he looked
Filthy dirty.
He’d been up the early hours of the morning
Going across to the moors
Getting water cress. Now water cress
Was another thing where people could get,
What shall we say, the wrong thing.
He knew what water cress was.
It would be wild.
You could have a great big lot from Dirty Jack.
Mother and the neighbours would wash it --
Salt and all that on there, lovely!
Now that was a green, you see;
That’s what you lived off of.
Hygiene then was a different thing.
So you had to watch what you were eating.
Now if you buy it,
It’s all processed.
And they ask a lot more money.
Modern watercress--clean
Bedminster. Were the streets tidied and cleaned for the
photograph?
The kids of Myrtle Street outside No 21.
Bill Fox
is standing left with his arm around
Cissie, his little sister who died
aged 4.
3 Establishing the Provenance: Broad Walk, Knowle
When mum and I got married
We lived in the front room of Broad Walk
For a period, until we got the house,
The bungalow, because they were empty.
Now, whilst we were there,
Olive and Ken got married
And they went to live in the front room
So if mum and I, you and Jackie
Went up to Broad Walk to see Nan,
Olive would be there. Ken was in the war.
“So you didn't have the six of you
Olive and Ken,
Marj and Bill,
Edith and Ted
All in one house?”
I asked.
“Oh, you're talking about
Uncle Bill and all that?
“No.” I said. “You are the Bill.
Did you and mum
Nan and Gramper
Auntie Ol and Uncle Ken
Live together in that house?”
“No, no, no, we never.
We lived in there first
As I explained,
Then Olive and Ken got married
And they lived in there
And when Ken come home
They went over Brislington
Opposite where Uncle Bill had the shop.”
“But how did you see Nan
When there were air raids?
Did you go to their house?”
“Auntie Elsie was living there then.
Remember Big Fat Auntie Elsie?
We have been up there when Nan's been ill.
And that's when we heard all about this.”
“Oh, I see; so you didn’t actually see
Her crawling under things?”
“No, but we knew
From what we were told
That it was true.
There's no question.”
Ken's official letter home from France to No 98.
He was
seriously wounded at Caen
and in hospital in England. When Olive
(aged 18)
went up to see him nobody offered her help.
Bill Taylor, Ken Frieze, Kath Taylor, Olive Frieze Bill
Fox
These are the kids and the relations at
Winchester
Avenue, Brislington a few years later.
Back Row: Kath Taylor, Marj Fox,
x, Auntie Else,
x, x, NanMoreton, Olive Frieze. Middle Row: Jackie Fox,
x, Sue Taylor, Front: Barry Fox, Steve Taylor, Pen Frieze
Marj Moreton at No 98
When there was a shortage of beer,
That was when I was living in Broad Walk,
Then. About six months.
He'd go out by the gate, lean on the gate
And then might come back in and start to put on his boots.
Nan Moreton had polished them for him.
Kept them by the fireplace.
She always helped him put them on.
Anyway. He’d start putting his boots on.
I' d say “Where you going then, Ted?”
He’d wave his hand in the air, not saying anything.
That’s it! that's him!
I had to wait then to hear what he had to say.
I said “There isn’t any beer about.”
“The Talbot.”
I said “How d’you know?”
He'd get out there and he’d see certain blokes
That liked a drink, and if he saw them going one way
That pub was open
And if they went the other way
That was “The Friendship.”
He certainly was an amazing bloke, mind you.
He was a boozer.
If Bill Taylor was alive he’d tell you a thing.
He’d go in the pub; perhaps there might be three of us--
Bill Taylor, myself, and Ted
And he’d go up to the counter
And he would (tap, tap) one finger out (tap tap)
And stand.
He didn’t say anything, just draw attention.
1: 98 Broad Walk where Ted watched the walkers
2: The Friendship is just off the picture.
3: The Talbot is just off the picture
The Talbot at the end of Broad Walk. The queue
is for National Health orange juice and dried milk.
You could never get to the bottom of what he was.
Never found out exactly
What it is.
The story went--
I don’t know whether Nan knew,
How she met him.
I never knew much about it at all--
There was a little whisper, you know,
Around in the family somewhere
That he'd been to university.
Which was a job to get there in those days
But whether there was truth in it I don't know.
He was an orphan.
He was one on his own, a man on his own,
If you know what I mean.
(Auntie Beattie said he was a brilliant man.
“Give him the number and he’d tell you the hymn.”)
It was presumed Nan Moreton had asthma, shock asthma, in the war.
Now whether there's any truth in that I just don't know.
I mean, the doctors can say that,
They can say “she've got asthma” so much
“How she get that?”
“Shock, war, and all that”
At the time of air raids
She used to crawl under anything out the way,
She was terrified
Go down the air raid shelter when the bombs started then
Crawl under a chair or anything
Nan Moreton at 98
Nan Fox and my dad, Mum and I,
We were at Southsea.
They’d gone down there for the week
And we went down to see them for the day.
Every body was down there.
But the papers were coming out,
Then everybody wanted to get back home
As quick as they could.
We chased back, Mum and I.
It was quite a pleasant trip actually.
But anyway we rushed,
And got home quickly
Because there was talk of planes coming over
And bombing
And parachute troops
And all that.
Everybody had a thought in their minds
Of what might happen
As far as I was concerned, myself,
I don’t know why it was,
But I was never worried about it,
Wasn't concerned about it, ever.
I had a sort of feeling that it couldn't happen.
I think Churchill built up a wonderful feeling
That we’d never be conquered.
Adelaide Fox, William Fox and Marjorie Fox
Marjorie Fox
There must have been a navy; I saw the blue
RN on white of the packets of their cigarettes
I’d dive for to take home. -- I already had
“Three Castles,” "Range Rider" “Scissors ”--
Never a warship, just the Queen Mary
Or Elizabeth steaming along that horizon,
Sending their massive wash
Over, perhaps under and past the paddlers,
Anticipating, watching, waiting, battered,
Up the beach. Too big to jump or face.
We watched the ship twenty minutes before
From the beach through dad's dad's old
Binoculars we kept in a scratched mock
Leather case, where, at the bottom, we stored
Emergency toilet paper just in case.
I didn't see it at the time, but I never saw
Any leftovers from the war there;
Then. No men without a leg outside shop doorways,
Like home.
No bombed-out shells, museumed homes, wallpaper
Through arches of rough bricks, a strip
Of pelmet , exposed urinals.
We went there by train from Temple Meads,
When Dad'd come home from work and washed and changed.
He walked along with mum and us behind
Up the long incline from the bus, a brown
Suitcase, strapped tight, in each hand for balance.
That Saturday he’d buy me a comic book
I’d keep for years, to read on the journey down.
Once seated, (me paralysed by eagerness and pride)
We'd watch him pull up sharply
And then let slide through his fingers
The leather strap, thicker than the belt
Around his waist, that dropped the window down
And that he’d raise fast enough if he forgot
A tunnel, especially that long one
Somewhere past Bath, to keep the soot
From flying in. The short ones?
We just laughed at those.
Look, there’s the White Horse, who saw
It first? carved in the chalk hills in whose eye
Aunt Polly and dad’s mum had had a picnic.
And now here’s Salisbury Station, half way there,
Dreaded so deeply though we wanted it,
Where we wait, and Dad gets out and disappears
While clink clink clanking shuffles its way along
And back through all the carriages as we
Rendezvous with another train, strangers
Agree, and us full of terror he might
Not come back in time to pass the cups of tea,
Through the opened window, for him and mum.
We took our ration books along with us
And gave them in to the lady who cooked us food.
And we topped and tailed in a canvas camp bed.
On the beach the adults loll in deckchairs
Trousers rolled up, big hankies on their heads,
Buy pots of tea, leave half a crown deposit.
Wanting to look adult your ice cream comes
In a wafer, but don’t squeeze hard. Sometimes
Some aunts and uncles drive down to join us,
For a day or two. (That’s Auntie ElsieDigging in her bag, looking very hard
For something the deckchair man wants when he
Comes round for the hour’s rent. Sometimes
He gives up waiting; sometimes she has to pay.)
They stay in a hotel though.
One day, in the rain-- us not allowed
To stay indoors--we walked around, and I saw
Some Andrews Sisters helping out on the stage
On the pier where you could print your name on strips
Of metal, where a crane behind a glass case
Always missed grabbing what you wanted
Depositing emptiness for you in the little shoot,
Where you bought candy floss and dad licked
His hands and patted the sides to stop it floating off
Or sticking to people if they walked too close.
On Friday night, when it was dark, already
In pyjamas, covered up, we went out just
To watch the Queen in fireworks on the pier.
And Saturday, the week up, the bags strapped tight,
My father took us that morning for a last
Look round, perhaps for ever, a year
Was close to ever, and dad would buy
A hammer that they'd wrap and he'd take back home with him.
Bill, Barry, Jackie, and Marj Fox; Pen and Olive Frieze.
For every trip to Southsea
we took our plastic "field
glasses".
At the bottom of the case
we always kept (and sometimes used)
a supply of toilet paper
in case of emergencies.
Above is a piece
that must be over
50 years old. Any offers?
Ted Moreton, Bill
Fox, ?, Sue Taylor, Marj, Olive, Kath Moreton , Nan Moreton ?,
Bill Taylor (with piles),
Jackie Fox, Big Fat Auntie
Elsie
Auntie Elsie tried to bluff her way out of paying
for the deckchair rent
by trying to
wear out
the deckchair man,
pretending her ticket was in her big bag
and spending hours searching for it.
The last go in the paddle boat, perhaps for ever.
Aunt Rose’s first husband Harry Jelfs
Wrote Nan and Gramper during World War One
From Southsea Commons where he did his drill.
(I've got the letter here), he'd been quite ill --
They’d filled his arm with enteric fever germs
To keep him healthy when he went abroad.
Wrote “Tell Jim Pring to join the Royal Berks
(Was that a pun?) It’ll make a man of him,”
And signed “I Remain, your affectionate brother-in-law”
A month before they shipped him off to France;
(Apart from the misplaced capital, a good letter
From one who finished school at twelve
(He must have paid attention all the time))
And 12 months after, unrecognisable, he died.
His missing- and unrecognisableness
Are witnessed on a pillared temple, a mass
-ive monument behind an Arras (France).
Designed by Sir Edward Lutyens. Lest we forget.
--Another family brush with the truly great.
10 When I Went to Join Up First
When I went to join up,
Which you had to,
Not join up actually,
You had to go to the
It was the labour exchange
Put your name down for what force you wanted to go in
And my school pal, school mate, Bert Cochrane
He said to me, “Join the Navy, Bill.”
He said, “Let’s join the Navy together.”
We’d still kept friendly after we left school.
He worked in Marden’s and I was out the BAC.[1]
And I said “Uh, no. I don’t fancy the Navy.”
“No, I said, “I’ll join the Air Force.”
Well, you had to get in different queues.
If you wanted to join the air force you got in one queue.
They had it up there, hanging on the wall:
“Navy” or whatever it was you wanted to join.
We were in the next line to each other.
I was in one and we were sort of going down
Till we got to the desk
And he was calling over to me
(Well he wasn’t the only one
And other blokes were trying to talk to other blokes.)
And I said, “No, I don’t fancy the Navy.”
Any way I joined,
I put my name down,
That’s all you had to do. And it was there.
That was why later in the war
I went down to the Air Force
To see if I could join
More or less, knowing very well I’d applied,
Thinking they’d have that record.
Any way, old Bert,
He went in the Navy
And he went down with the Repulse.
That was the Japs put that one down.
I don’t think there was anybody saved out of that one.
The lot went down.
The Repulse.
That was Bert Cochrane. I’d heard him say the name
Once or twice, I think, when small, part of the world
Of cockles, chitt’lin, the faggot and pea shop,
The Hen and Chickens, Chinny Pope.
I sat down on my return to find out
More, thanked Heaven for the Internet.
I didn’t know that Famous Sunken Ships
Was such a market. Oil paintings, proof copies
And fine prints of HMS Repulse float
Up and down and all across my screen;
And here’s a story of a Japanese
Fighter pilot, the morning after, dropping
Fresh flowers where it sank, in honour of
Its bravery. Bert Cochrane’s name, though,
Cannot be reached. But I do find out about
Two great uncles from different ends
Of Wessex, killed in the Great War:
Where they are buried, the day they died.
(Saturday for both), and about the few
Survivors from that celebrated ship who,
Far from the South China Sea, still keep in touch.
And I do keep seeing old Bert and Dad
Move side by side in different lines.
Chitterlings, made in Bedminster,
bought in Knowle, and eaten in Hengrove
12 Petherton Gardens: After an Air Raid
At 4 o’clock in the morning, on one particular time, there was a very very bad bombing session that was all over Bristol generally. It went on all night. When the all-clear went we came out of the shelter. I remember walking down our road and into the field.
I was amazed to see cows led down in the field.
Some were stood up; they were all
Motionless. They were just like you might see
Carved out of something. You could have gone
Right up to them. They hadn't moved and they
Didn’t move then. The first one to move--
I always remember this because
Arthur Nightingale, he was with me,
And we were talking about it--
And I think it was somewhere
Around about three or four hours after
Before the first cow moved.
Further down in the field we could see
Something we thought was a cow.
It was a horse.
He'd come down from Dundry, all across the fields
Jumping barbed wire fences.
He was ripped to blazes
Where he hadn't really jumped them.
He’d gone through them,
If you know what I mean.
So terrified.
Finished up
Flat out on the field.
To be quite honest there was a few dogs down there,
Biting away at it.
That's just how it was.
And of course a huge great crater was out there
And Nick from just up the road
Used to go over swimming in it.
That was the field where, half way down,
The acorns and oak apples grew
Huge and massive and wide, and beneath,
I couldn't understand where from, a single daffodil
Used to grow, curious, for several years.
In a far corner, just beyond that tree,
Left over from the days when martyrs burned,
A small sign, set back in a hedge,
White letters on black board, exposed and peeling,
Said: “Trespassers will be persecuted.”
Would they imprison me in Dundry Tower?
(It had a block; sometimes they cut off heads.)
And adults owned the world, they had the right.
I fainted inside slightly whenever I walked past,
Hoped it was gone, prayed it would disappear.
At the other corner of the field stretched
A marshy pond, we might come upon
Only on strange days, perhaps once a year.
We gave it wide berth, even then, lurking
In low land, flat pats all around, deep holes
In mud cow foot on cow foot had plunged, then
Re-plunged, showing the suction that could pull
Us down until only a hand for a friend
To hold onto, heroically, and pull
Us out with, was left out, faintly waving. He'd know
The way to save us, from the films, but we knew
That danger, always imminent, too well.
One evening, just before dusk, returning
From visiting the birds’ nests we valued most,
Tucked into hedges, with an egg or two
Lovingly taken and skilfully blown
Through a thorn hole top and bottom, we,
Taking a short cut, suddenly found them,
Purple in the gauze light,
The irises.
What made us stop to grasp the thick stalked things
I don’t know, but we did, time leaving us
To ourselves, finding out spots for stepping in,
First far then further, without getting wet,
Our feet, finding false purchase on the odd
Thin-grassed clumps of mud, pulling, unable
To snap them off, and pulling until
Up they came, roots and all. Dusk speckled
The light as we trailed home.
When I got home the darkness was quite firm.
Mum seeing me, at the stove, burst into tears.
I’d never seen her cry before and told
Her so with unfeigned curiosity.
You’re safe. Of course. The only danger I
Was in was of getting mud all over
My shoes and socks. Why would I not be safe?
I gave her the irises and she cried again.
I was 9 but knew about Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley at
school, so accepted that troublemakers were persecuted-- rather cruel
for walking across a field, but that was life.
You didn’t need permission not to turn up
If there’d been bombing.
At the time they were bombing Bristol
They’d be bombing the BAC. [2]
One time I was home at night
They bombed the BAC.
Well, I say bombed it;
They bombed and some of the glass
Or whatever was on the roofs
Was broken. You couldn’t work in there
With light showing out through.
But anyway
The thing is
If they were bombing here
They were bombing the aerodrome at the BAC.
So there were problems all the way round.
When the war started
They gave us a sheet that said
If there was a raid
We had to hide in the hedges
In the fields outside.
15 Overhead Bombers in East Street, Bedminster
I happened to be in East Street at the time.
Everybody wondered, what’s all the noise?
About 50 or 60 planes, Germans,
And our air force met them.
Their bombers, and that, were right up
And our planes, Spitfires,
Were right at the bottom
And everybody was looking up!
Watching it!
There was our planes going up
And underneath them;
Firing at them,
And going up higher,
And then coming back down.
Brought a hell of a lot down.
Hell of a lot.
The bombers came over with fighters to protect them.
Heinkel bombers over Brsitol
East Street, towards Bedminster police station
16 Guarding Whitchurch Aerodrome
The Dutch pilots,
When the war was more or less starting,
They, many of their army and air force,
Came over here to fight, over to us.
If they'd stopped there they either got killed or else.
And these huge transport planes
Were left on the ground
On the aerodrome down there.
There were no English planes down there.
All Dutch.
(When I say “all,” don't get me wrong.
There wasn't hundreds of them.)
We were there to protect those planes
From any landings.
Parachutists was the thing,
Germans.
I suppose if it was forced
They could have landed planes down there
But they never did
Because we had guns there to protect it.
No, don't joke; it was a serious business really.
There was a fellow in training in our lot.
We used to run up hills with guns
And all our equipment, training really seriously
And he collapsed and died.
It wasn't a case of checking up to see
If you were fit enough to be in the Home Guard.
You could have had all sorts wrong with you,
And people did.
We were there for the whole night, until daylight
Not allowed to sleep at all
And I’d been to work all day.
I wasn't on guard every night, mind;
Sometimes we’d be training up at Broad Walk
But a certain amount of men
Would always be over there
Might have been from the Tenth Battalion
(We were the Tenth) It could have been
The Eighth or Ninth.
We had a duty to do every so often
To go over and guard that place.
For eight hours.
As I say I finished work at five o'clock.
You just went out to walk round
For about two hours, all the way round the drome,
And behind you at intervals
Of probably quarter of an hour to twenty minutes
There'd be another two. And when you'd got back
To your quarters then another lot would go out.
And you'd stay back in and probably sit down
And have a smoke for awhile.
And you might get another duty in the early hours,
Perhaps from 4 o'clock till six.
I got the plans of the trenches.
I wrote them on this piece of paper
Just to make sure.
You could see the aerodrome
From where we lived, just across the fields;
But we had to form up and march back to Broad Walk
And then we'd walk home.
If we'd been on all night
We'd be excused from work.
Probably go in lunch time.
Other days I’d do a 12 hour day. I’d leave
Home for work in the morning about six o’clock
Catch the bus, then get home about 7.
After a full day's work, before going on duty, time to
pose
Now I can’t see the aerodrome if I look out,
Nor where it was. There's nothing guarding
Us now or to be guarded: the school I watched
Being built, the roads of houses, are grey,
And an Azda fills the final gaps.
Somewhere behind, a little to the right
Bright air balloons now rise on Sunday
Afternoons, red, blue and white, sacs of hot air,
Controlled and partnered by a latter-day few
To whom so many now owe such a lot,
Who rise or fall on pork bellies and winter wheat ,
Hang over in the wind, though free to fly.
The barrage, balloon elephants,
I watched through the hawthorns, tethered by wires I
Couldn't see, to the ground, loosely around
The aerodrome, stirred me far more,
Made my mind whir, wondering could they
Keep the Germans off who Wednesday playtimes flew
Over our school in endless echelon?
(No one told us in Forty Nine the war
Was over, ever. How could we know
If they were friend or foe?)
Like my clear-minded belief
In Father Christmas who each year landed
Behind the house and walked across the field
Just for our road. One year, I now suppose,
He must have stayed at home, at any rate
I never heard again, trying to sleep,
His engine, thrumming, awaiting his return.)
Then, I could see arched hangers and a runway
Plain black and flat upon the fields that stretched
Unhindered to the hills, to mysterious
Maesknoll Tump (built by the Romans for their
Slaughtered dead—we found no bones-- and Dundry,
With the tower we knew had been prepared
For if the Armada’d ever beaten Drake.
A windsock, too, without a foot, stolen
From some impoverished scrawny giant,
A great shredded wheat of a thing, like what
Nan kept beside her bath to wash her back
For showing pilots where they ought to land.
18 Arresting a Man in Cadogan Road
Well four of us went to this house.
We walked down in the road,
(In the road,
Not on the pavement
Not in the middle of the road),
Four of us with guns
An officer as well.
We went to this house.
Two of the privates stayed in the front
And two walked round the back.
(I mean that was done by us, but God knows
It must have been done all over England.)
And when he came out,
(Naturally he had to come out, if he was home)
He would walk in between the four people.
And walk up to headquarters
And he’d have to report.
And once he’d reported
He was a Home Guard and signed.
So if he didn’t turn up he was a deserter.
For which the punishment would be greater.
That’s how it was.
I was in one of the details for Cadogan Road.
Marched all along, up through Salcomb Road,
Up onto the main Wells Road,
And back round to the headquarters in Broad Walk.
It sounds strange to people I suppose.
It didn’t matter how he marched.
If he didn’t march in time
He was going to get his heels kicked up.
Wasn’t he? He didn’t probably know
His left foot from his bloody right foot.
You didn’t know the characters.
So that’s what we used to do.
He was probably a decent sort of a bloke,
But perhaps he may have been
A conscientious objector.
Could have been.
But even then they had to join the Home Guard.
I mean
It’s no good letting them lie around doing nothing.
Other blokes, some of these fellows, died
Because they weren’t fit.
They were doing Home Guard duties.
It was strenuous.
I remember one fellow--
We had all sorts of weapons
One was a Lewis gun
Which were things on the ground which you fired --
Who got a nasty cut across his eye
When we were out on duties,
Where he got too close
And the gun came back.
But there you are.
You had to defend the country.
19 Cadogan Road and the Stream on Airport Road
One winter after the war, in the greatest
Of snows, before or since, I walked
With an aunt up Cadogan Road, wearing
Socks outside my shoes to help me grip,
To stop me slipping, as I climbed its slope.
With the rest of the family too.
They lifted my sister’s pushchair across
The Airport Road, up and over the kerbs
To where the pavement lay--
We all laughed at the funniness of it all.
Later I cycled down it on a bike
Without brakes and wheels as big as dinner
Plates and across the Airport Road, without
Stopping (the aerodrome was still open then)
To see if Mum was up at Nan’s
Though she’d told me she wouldn’t be,
And never to cross that dangerous main road.
Just at the top, one day, before they built
The pub, an open manhole’d gathered quite
A crowd: a pig must have found its way along
A water drain beneath Cadogan Road
To here. I too peered down, keeping well
Back from the edge. Odd for a pig to have
Such hair and bark. And I'm still amazed
There'd been a farmer with a pig so close
To anywhere where I might choose to play.
Cadogan Road still leads to Airport Road
Though the airport it led down to’s long since gone.
Following it you used to reach Broad Walk
And where the Home Guard had its church hall base.
That way's been blocked now; and the Home Guard, too.
Unnecessary, they've closed down.
New buildings, easy to manage homes
For the elderly or families of one,
Are now on the road that leads off to the right.
My father in his clean but rusting car
Used to take shopping, when he retired,
A friend who rented there. When he carried in
Her shopping (she had trouble managing
The steps) as he always did, he always
Locked the car (and when he got home he’d
Always chamois it) . Once, last, though, before
He reached her door he turned and saw it
Driving off. And that was that. Now he is back
On foot again and always will be now.
They found the car, next day, in the stream
Beside Airport Road, burnt out. But someone
Must have mended it, put it back on the road.
A month after, the police from South Wales phoned
Gave him the details of a car, asked was it his.
A gang had used it as a getaway
After they'd tried to rob a Cardiff bank.
Unknown to all the mutiny of war
When neighbours armed took a malingerer off.
20 Trying to Sign Up the Second Time
I went down to Stokes Croft in the car.
I’d got really fed up working out at the BAC
On the machines. I thought
“I can be doing better than this.”
I went down Stokes Croft
And tried to sign up for the Air Force.
It was on one lunch time.
I had the car at the time.
I went in and saw the bloke.
I said, “I’d like to join the Air Force.”
“OK .” He asked a lot of questions.
Took all the writing down.
“Where d’you work.”
I said “BAC.”
“What d’you do.”
I told him.
“OK, You’ll hear from us.”
Never did.
When I mentioned the BAC
Wouldn’t let me go.
I was doing a job there.
I mean, they couldn’t take everybody.
Yeah, I did.
I never said anything to mum.
Probably I knew very well they wouldn’t let me out.
Just satisfied myself.
When I went up to join,
The first time,
The same day
I had a letter asking me to go,
Straight up, no messing.
I joined with this fellow Ron Pool
And a couple more.
But Ron and I got palled together.
We just struck up a friendship.
We both liked a pint.
And we were both very good shots,
Very good shots.
We always used to say
We could fire better if we'd gone in the Talbot
And had a couple of pints
Before we used to go on duty.
Or at least I did.
I could fire just as well if not better
After I'd had a couple of pints
Which proved the point
Because I got the cup
For the best shot in the Home Guard.
I’d never fired a rifle before,
Till I went in the Home Guard.
Never.
One had never been in my hands.
And when I joined the Tenth Battalion
Of the Home Guard, Knowle,
We weren’t using the big thing, 303s;
We were using 202s, a smaller edition.
We never had the ammunition to waste too much.
So we would practice probably once in three weeks
Or it might be a fortnight or a month.
And when you qualified you'd go on
Through to the competition which I did,
And Ron Pool did,
But his marks dropped down.
So I went on and I got to the final,
Best shot in the Bristol Home Guard.
There was the 8th Battalion
10th Battalion and
9 th Battalion.
Every area had their own number.
We were the Tenth at Knowle
They had to keep firing regularly
Until a few of them dropped out,
And a few more; till at last
There was eight of us left altogether.
That was Frank Bennett, an ex-Bisley shot,
And two officers.
Out of the eight there was only two privates,
That was myself and another young lad.
They give us our bullets.
We'd load our guns
And we started off
Five or six hundred yards at a target.
My eyesight was brilliant then.
At a target about the size of a man 's head
So you had to get down with a really steady hand.
And then you'd fire.
Your score would come up
And the officer would come back with it
Then you'd move forward
To four hundred yards.
Fire five shots in a certain time,
Lying down; then 200 yards;
Then it was 100 yards rapid fire.
We were close to the targets.
You didn't get much time to get down.
When the score come back
It was printed in the paper
I got it upstairs somewhere.
I think I had 8 bulls, and 2 inners.
It was a brilliant score.
Don was in the army then.
When Don used to come home on leave
He was a regular army bloke.
But it didn't mean that he was any bloody better
Than anybody else.
Ted Moreton used to think he was a good lad--
He was in the army.
Anyway, I proved my point with the rifle.
22 Have My Rifle, He’s a Good One
The strange thing about winning the cup is,
(If Ted Moreton was alive he'd tell you)
The rifle we were using was put in your charge
And you had to hand it back in after you’d been firing.
If you understand what I mean,
There was rifles and rifles.
The one you walked around with wouldn't be
The one you'd use in the competition.
When it come to, of a Sunday morning,
I went to the headquarters to get my rifle.
Everybody else had theirs.
I looked for mine; it wasn't there.
I reported it--it had my name on it.
And they said,
“Well, somebody must have took it out.”
There was a sergeant there, a Scotsman,
Ted Moreton knew him quite well.
He said “Bill, have my rifle. He's a good un.”
I said, “Well, I'll take your word for it.”
And I used it;
I used a rifle that wasn’t my own!
Not as it made much difference,
They're all made on the same lines.
Ted Moreton knew all about that.
He used to see the bloke, Jock he was,
In The Friendship
And he told Ted all about it.
Frank Bennett who was an ex-Bisley player
(He never got through to the final.
I was the only one out of the Tenth that got through.)
Used to tell me
When we used to go on the range,
(He knew very well how good I was)
(I'm not blowing my own trumpet)
He used to say,
“Bill why don’t you slow down a bit
You're going at it too fast.”
But what happens is that
When you bring the rifle up
You sight, you see,
You sight your target up
(I can't do it now, arthuritis.)
You bring your rifle up
And you look through the sights.
And when you're on target, you fire.
But if you come up
And you're not sure
Then you have to get down again
Hold your head down,
Close your eyes,
Then come back up.
I used to come straight up
And as soon as I was on the target
I'd fire.
It paid off.
Any way,
As I say,
I got that cup for it.
The best shot in Bristol.
I never had anything printed on it, though.
I always dreaded they might pick me to be a sniper
If the Germans ever invaded.
I mean, he probably didn’t want to fight,
No more than me.
How to make a sniper suit, taken from the Home Guard
Fieldcraft Manual of 1942
We always kept the Glass Dish on the right
Of the Sideboard, by the Silver Cup.
In it we stowed the things we never wanted
To throw away, bus tickets and chocolate
Wrappings to buy wheelchairs and guide dogs
Minute playing cards. Only the settee
Opened twice a year equalled it for thrills
When, on a Sunday morning Dad untacked
The sacking underneath the frame and took out
What had slipped out of pockets. Mostly
Forgotten, the mystery of six months before,
Brought back, alive, but never warm again.
The Sideboard had its own life too, had survived
A bomb that fell through the top, one air raid
Night. (In fact a stone blown from a crater
When a bomb fell in a field behind the house
While we all lay still in the church hall up the road.)[3]
The Cup, though, sat, a bit black in places,
With nothing in it, blank. Mum used the base once
To kill a daytime mouse running the gauntlet
Of her indignation along the window ledge,
(The blood still there for us to think about
When we came home from school).
Won in the war for shooting when, if you
Won a cup they always left the lettering off,
Dad said; its provenance maintained just in
His words. One June when we returned it had gone,
Placed carefully in a cupboard somewhere.
Now on the wall a lovely clock reflects
All the rays of the sun, and beams the hours--
The other award they gave to dad,
This time at a proper ceremony
By colleagues honouring him when he retired.
Witnessed by all the works, who gathered round
Him at the centre. Preserved in an album
Of huge and glorious photographs.
25 The Scores in the Evening Post
That 99 I scored in the competition
Would be out of the hundred,
Out of the possible hundred.
That was my score. On the target.
Understand?
I’m not saying that happened every time.
I had a couple of possibles.
But most times I was 98 or 99.
And you could see the scores in the Evening Post.
I got slips of paper in an envelope upstairs.
Some of the people in the competition
We were firing against
Were down to about 80 odd.
And that’s the honest truth.
Yeah, my sight was brilliant.
Well, it must have been.
The Evening Post was the paper the neighbours
Opposite took. They owned their bungalow
And a sports car with a dickie seat in the boot.
The Evening World was the paper we always read
A few less pages but the green Wollygog
Badge gave out more fun than the faded red
Of the Post's Pillar Box club.
And they had a lorry around Christmas time
That drove along Wells Road and sometimes,
When Uncle Ken took to the back streets,
We could pop out three or four times in the night
Just ahead of it and once we caught its tail.
When everything in the world had settled down
And peace lay over all the world
The World closed down. The Post took over,
The paper all Bristol asked for. But I
Could never take an interest in its club.
Out of the blue one evening the Post
Printed my letter explaining very
Deliberately to the old people
Who still liked Gracie Fields that Elvis
Presley too had talent. And printed a page
Of bitter replies from the aged ones,
Calling me to shame. I was cross and showed
In my immediate reply (also printed)
How theirs were emotional responses
That didn’t touch my logic. And I took care
With clever awkwardness not to split
An infinitive. Madame de Sauvignon
And an unknown rhubarb farmer
Also had letters published at that time;
We were amazed it was so easy
To hoodwink an editor. My friends gave me
The accolade for writing the letter
That evoked the most response.
But humiliated, despite my local fame,
I burned the letters that were sent to me,
On the open fire at home, unstamped,
Unsigned, as mum and Nan looked on, wondering.
Later the Evening Post printed how I had managed
On the running track, then my exam scores,
Engagement, and the wedding announcement.
Here is a photograph of mum, who
After a day at work and cooking us tea
Had taken a bus to town to hear a talk from
Somebody on health or food.
Tom Stoppard was working then at the Post.
If only I’d known that it wouldn’t be long
Before he too was famous. I left my home, though,
When Rosencrantz was just starting at the Hippodrome.
h
27 What Ruined my Sight
What ruined my sight a lot
Was the fact that when I worked,
Working at the BAC
I worked a tool and cutter grinder
Which sparks kept coming up from.
You were supposed to wear glasses
But sometimes, if you’re doing a tool,
Grinding a very small tool, mind you,
You wouldn’t know the spark was coming up.
I sometimes used to drop my glasses.
The ones that were in that tin, out in the shed
Those were the ones I used to use.
The point is,
To get my vision better because they’d dirty up
I used to drop my glasses a bit to look.
Of course, in flew a spark.
Up the eye hospital.
I was up the eye hospital
Which is still at the same place more or less
If you went up there at all they had a book on you
Mine was about three pages
Printed and all that
What they’d done to your eye the other times
And I had pages
Pages.
I got told about it.
They said, “You should wear the glasses.”
I said, “Well, I do but I dropped them just for a few moments.”
Eye shades, I had loads of those about.
Always wearing them.
What happens then is
You get an ulcerated eye.
Still.
I’m still here.
28 Young Drunk Pilots at the City Ground
Young pilots, young lads 18, 19 years of age.
I remember going,
(Of course the football went on in the war.
They had football teams.
The City and all the others,
Things were still going on then.)
I remember going down to the City ground
And they weren’t too far away.
It was Third Division South
I used to go down there
And a couple of these young lads.
I knew one of them,
At Queen Elizabeth,[4]
The ones who wore the yellow stockings
In their school uniform.
I remember him because he lived
Up by Bert Cochrane.
Him and a couple of others,
They only looked boys.
I mean I was a man up to them
To look at.
Drunk.
They were going into the City ground.
Whether any of them knew anything about football,
They just carried on.
These were the pilots.
Yes, never came back.
No.
Shame really.
I mean that’s, that was what they were doing.
They were going in it,
Fighting mad, sort of.
But there, some of them did come back.
Saturdays, when we were older, and dad
Went down the City ground after work,
I’d listen to the football scores with mum
On the radio in the kitchen and eat
Cockles and brown bread. It was dark outside.
I put the numbers roughly by the names
Of towns I didn't know were towns,
Truncated, squeezed and forced into
The margin between the centre pages
Of the Evening World (then they used every space)
And wait for him to come home and say
How clever I was, and perhaps one day
To hear (I never did) he wouldn’t need
To buy the Pink’Un[6] now from the chap
We could hear calling out in the next road down.
And then we’d sit beside the fire, banked up with slag
With a kettle perched upon the top, and look
For visitors in the sparks that singed
The chimney soot, careful of chilblains,
Me on the coal bin with its lid up-cupped
And Jack on a cushion on Mum’s knitting box
And listen to The Luscombs, In Town
Tonight, and Jewel and Warris and dad would check
How much the pools were going to send to us.
One day dad took me with him and I sat
On his shoulders for part of the game
And was thrilled, when we were leaving, to find
If I lifted my feet I’d be carried,
Blind, between the coats and backs of men,
Like a small screw of salt, getting lost in
A workman’s haversack, held up by their press
As they hobbled slow, good humoured, towards
A small gate, in a wall of brick, across their path.
But I couldn’t understand the game, though I did,
And do still, inwardly shake with delight
To watch a goal net shiver, hit hard
By a ball from a long way out.
Once when a boy came on exchange from France
I took him down, to show him our English game.
And again I could hardly see, standing
On such a gentle slope—feeling it wrong
Kinaesthetically, and socially
Insulting, to sit down in the stands with players
On ten pounds a week, running flat out—
So many heads between me and the pitch.
I had though burst with shock with the field
Still in full view, before the crush arrived,
To see such a vast expanse of green,
In the middle of my town. And even
When my neighbours’ heads
Made blots, small glimpses of sheer vividness
Still shot themselves out straight towards my eyes.
Sometimes, me home from university,
We drove down to the City’s ground as man
To man. But why did he always park so far
Away? So he could beat the crowds when he
Drove home, I’m boxing clever he said.
We might as well have parked at Nan’s, his mother’s,
Where, when we were small, we heard vague roars
Mysteriously lower throughout the air from time
To time, perhaps of a crowd and wondered if it
Was a goal, and whose. And as we walked, he’d tell me
Of the house where in the war someone
Had filled his garden, front and back, with cars
- No one had petrol then so they sold them cheap—
And he’d hung on till after the war was over
And made some money. That was where Les and Beattie
Used to live. That player on the ground was good
At convincing the ref he’d just been fouled.
We stood beside each other and watched, dad
Commenting, passing judgement, utterly sure
But I, flat footed, could offer only platitudes
Comments with no mass. He’d turn to the men
Beside us and together, they’d exchange
In ordinary words carrying
The extraordinary weight and wisdom
Of a century of life in Bedminster, or Ashton,[7]
Applying it to what they saw right then.
Then we’d walk back to the car talking
Admiring the generosity
Of drivers letting others into the line
Because those others out of their own
Generosity would let still others in.
Just you watch.
You asked me if I thought,
“There’s a war going on I don’t know
If I could bring a child into the world
No, no; there was no question about it.
You got about life the same way.
I mean over in this country
Apart from going short of a few things,
We had rationing, and all that,
Bombs dropping and all that
We were very fortunate, very fortunate.
If you know what I mean
We knew nothing about the war.
To be honest about it.
Although we had a rough time.
But you could always think of people in France
Which was in Europe
Put it that way,
That were open targets for the Germans
But they couldn't get anywhere near us, though.
So we were quite well off.
31 Norny in the Pond
I come home from work one day
And whilst mum was serving up my dinner
Went down the garden to look at the few things I had
down there
And Norny was down in that pond, right behind us.
At each end it had a cobblestone entry
That separated off two fields.
The cows could go down so far
But they couldn't get into the other field.
I heard such a shout down there just then.
Lucky I'd gone down the garden at that time.
The cobblestones were all,
The water had gone down a bit
So what was left was a slimy surface.
Norny must have
(Because it happened to me
When I was trying to get him out)
Stood on it, and slid down on his bottom,
Right into the water. Filthy.
Mind, he was lucky.
It was simple enough for me to get him out.
I didn't have to go swimming or anything like that
I just had to go steady down over the stones--
I slipped on the cobblestones.
But caught hold of his cardigan or whatever it was
And hauled him up out of it.
If I hadn't been around he wouldn’t have got out.
His mother come out then.
She must have been looking for him
He was only about 4, 4 1/2 something like.
So she was looking for him out in the field.
He was on his feet then, all covered in muck.
Later, he must have told her
So she came down and thanked me.
Then her husband came down,
He said, “Thanks every so much.
Have you done any damage?”
“No, it’s only working clothes,” I said. “They'll wash.”
I’d forgotten I had the gold watch on
My mum and dad gave me for my 21st
Of course I'd gone in and I drew in the watch.
Never worked again.
He did ask me a little while after
And I thought
A kid's life been saved, as you might say.
32 The Pond Where They Built the New School
I knew that pond well; too, fell into its thick
Water, as a child, one winter when the thin ice
I trod on broke, straddling the angle where
The two fields met, holding the post from which
The barbed wire strands stretched out from, all the way
Between those fields, from here to way beyond
The big tree where every year the rooks
Had their raggedy hap-hazard colony,
Swinging a rubber booted foot above
And round but holding on with half a hand,
Assuming that for me ice would cease to operate
Its laws I trod on it with increasing
Confidence till suddenly my strength of mind
Surrendered and I slid down, beneath..
Until I thought of what dad said, and this
Very act of writing, I’d forgotten
How I’d gone under. There are the rusty wires
Sticking out still;. I always snag my jacket
On those barbs, so have to swing out wide
Around the post; stand on the flat stone
At its base. And me already under,
Overcome, now by the old stones I'd
Never seen before, lining the side
As I went down, my mouth still open.
And down I went again.
At home
I vomited out the green weed then was seated
On the enamel draining board with my feet
In a mustard bath in a bowl in the sink,
Ashamed.
In summer, after, with the cows all gone
And the corn fields, then the hay fields, grown,
The water disappeared. The mud turned hard
As iron; then, oh, the foresight, oh
The power to do anything. I could see
Them, mud balls, squeezed between my palms, paddled
Into shape and dried, to load
Inside the pop gun I might buy. Hoarded
And hidden on the pond’s far side
Beneath the dark hedge, that’s where I put them.
Till I forgot them till another year
When they had cracked and shrunken
To irregular, misshapen peas, not mine.
By then they were building a new school
And I could stand on a pile of soil
In what used to be fields where the cowslips grew,
High above the bottom of a massive trench,
With my mother’s shawl that would fly
If I ran fast enough downhill, behind me,
And the handle of the dustbin lid,
A convex shield, filling my hand. I filled
The air, calling on the powers of all mythologies
To join me as I invaded David Pugh
Out there behind one of the other piles.
Before he went in for tea and I could get him to yield.
I grew these cowslips in Canada. In England
they are wildflowers. They are the most
marvellous flowers in the world.
? (I forget his name but he lived with his grandmother, and his
mother was that rare thing -- a woman milkman, after her husband
was killed in the war, next is Barry Fox, then David Howe,
whose father had a car, then Mickie Whitfield who later tried
to stop his bicycle wheel going round by putting his hand in the spokes.