31 Postcodes - Poem 2

 

Town mouse

So we started again,

smaller and tighter.

No Dad, we got a cat.

Someone went and stole that.

A girl from down the road,

she kept it in her garage.

Tigger sweet, tiger feet,

causing trouble in the street.

There was fighting and fretting,

Dr Who and a spaniel

and a George Best lampshade

that gave me all kinds of dreams.

I stole something too, 

big coins from my Granny.

She was losing things anyway,

memories, husbands.

I bought some bubble gum,

it was hard on my tongue.

RF 2.1.21

Video/audio for this one here.

After my Dad died, my Mum, one brother and I moved into the nearby town of Darlington and into a new house on a small estate (this was in 1973, I think, but it might have been a little later). It was one of those tall, skinny houses that have been quite fashionable in recent years (though it was a simpler version than the 21st century ones). I loved it at first as I quickly made a friend who lived over the road and we could just open our windows and shout to each other in the evenings. Her Dad did not like me (can’t think why…) and after one particular afternoon when we ‘ran away’ (not very far) I was banned from seeing her altogether. Theirs was a very tidy home and the Dad was very much in charge (something I wasn't used to). We were a very different operation partly because my Mum had had a very restricted (and miserable) second part of her childhood and so was all for children having as much freedom and pleasure as possible. She was a trained children’s social worker who really believed children were the most important thing in the world. I’m not sure this helped me impress other children’s parents. 

I had a strong memory of watching a TV programme that spooked me in this house (an episode of the detective show McCloud featuring, bizarrely, Dracula) but when I looked the show up recently that one wasn’t shown till 1977 so I must have got either my homes or my episodes mixed up on this one. We did always watch a lot of cop/detective shows (like most people) in the 1970s. There was so little TV for kids then – people complain about kids and video games these days but really much of my (bizarre) education was via Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, Target, Cannon etc. There’s a lot less murder on CBBC.

At some point my Mum’s Mum came to live with us in this house (at least I think she did – I certainly remember her being there a lot). This Gran was the only grandparent I ever really knew and she developed dementia in the 1970s. She was quite the character, married and widowed 4 times. Looking back my Mum was dealing with a whole lot of issues when we lived in this house. As a 7 year old, however, I was largely concerned with the pop charts, sweets, pets and TV. I don’t know why we moved from this house but we did move out of town fairly quickly (maybe in 1974?) and back into another village so maybe it was something to do with my Mum wanting more green in her life. Or maybe the neighbours got up a petition to get rid of us… 

This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.