Common Lodgings

The accommodation known as common lodgings (or common-lodging houses) was a Victorian institution whereby people who weren't related and couldn't afford to buy or rent their own home could share premises with others of the same sex on a daily (or strictly speaking a nightly) basis for the few pence which entitled them to a bed to sleep in. These establishments were also known as dosshouses in English slang and flophouses in America. The modern equivalent, though much smarter and better regulated, would be a hostel. 

The facilities of common lodgings were very basic, usually just a bed (often in a dormitory) and access to toilet and washing facilities. They were only one step up from sleeping rough, or the Poor House. Most common lodgings insisted that 'residents' vacate the premises between 10am and 4pm even if they were staying for more than one night. The transitory clientele mostly consisted of older people who were down on their luck or young people without family support who were supposedly starting to try and make their way in the world - like the hero of today's strange little poem.

The fact that these lodging houses were usually single-sex (essentially to counter prostitution rackets) was hard on poor couples who had to go to separate abodes at night; they were common in one sense but not in another.

'Good Beds 4d Per Night'

This latest poem then is a bit of playful wordsmithery, albeit with a message about the horrors of a post-moral Dickensian back-to-the-future thingy. It was knocked up between the end of a woeful football match and the lasagne being ready to eat. Also, despite the title, it's not really a ballad at all, but I thought if Carson McCullers can name a novella 'The Ballad of the Sad Café ', then I can do similar in a narrative poem.

The Sad Ballad Of Bonnie Clyde And Mistress Meatpie

Bonnie Clyde bestrides the antic  saddle of Feathers his faithful iron steed 

for it is Horseday and hooray no ordinal one at that.  Helmeted and trailing

a whiff of meths  our man rides off to a secret spot down by that dissonant 

foreshore to rendezvous, get paddlesome with his heart's delight and more

as breathlessly becoming  she waits among sandies young Mistress Meatpie

and shortly pell-mell it's all leather and heather and hell with this weather,

rainy spatterings,  a salt wind whipping hair and baleful gulls in whirling air

for here is the only bed where Clyde and his  lady fair may lie down together.

The Beak makes the rules but it's a clown of a law that dictates just because

a man and his wife are so poor, they must separate each night to rest apart.

Still, Meatpie believes in her Clyde. He's no one's fool, goes to a night school

and one day he'll invent the future and be the boast of the whole lousy town.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)