Thick & Thin

I was ten when I finally admitted that I couldn't see properly. I suppose it happened so gradually that I was able to deny there was a problem for quite some months. Reading books wasn't an issue, and taking in the bigger picture wasn't so bad. The difficulty I had was in focusing on detail at a distance, realising that I was no longer able to see clearly what was written on the blackboard from where I sat at the back of the class (and moving to the front wasn't an option). 

I hated the very thought of having to wear glasses. There was a stigma attached to being a 'four-eyes' and school children could be quite mean about any physical defects among their fellows. So I kept the truth to myself for as long as I could, squinting and pretending all was fine until one day my teacher, Miss Harris, rumbled me and we had a quiet chat.

I got really stressed about how I would tell my parents. After months of my pretending there was nothing wrong with my eyesight. it was like owning up to a big deceit. I can still remember sitting in the kitchen with my mum that evening and saying, as nonchalantly as I could, "Mum, I can't read the writing on the blackboard at school very clearly. I really have to squint." "Well, we must get your eyes tested then." It was as simple as that, no drama, just an appointment at the optician's. Within a week I was diagnosed as short-sighted and the week after that I had my first pair of national health specs..

How I hated them. They were those standard issue NHS glasses with thick round lenses and thin wire frames. My parents wouldn't (or maybe couldn't) let me have anything more stylish. I thought the glasses were horrible - this was a few years before John Lennon made them trendy and acceptable - and wearing them was a badge of shame for a ten year old, but they certainly sorted my short-sighted problem. 

To begin with, I only used to wear them in class and refused to at all other times. Naturally I got teased and called the inevitable names. I even tried losing them once, but the case had my address inside and a kindly old couple brought them to the house. 

One time my parents took us out for a surprise trip and my dad said I should bring my glasses. I refused to do so. At the cinema, everything was just a blur! I thought it was mean of them not to divulge where we were going. If they'd explained, I would have at least taken my specs with me. I suppose they thought they were teaching me a lesson, but I resented them quietly for some days. 

Of course, after a few months I took to wearing my national health glasses all the time. I won't say through thick and thin, because that's too obvious. Although they did still get me picked on (as I'll relate shortly), eventually the nuisance of not being able to see as well without them as with them was the determining factor.

The worst that ever happened was when I got picked on by some American children who lived in the next street to us in Peterborough. They were the sons and daughters of servicemen connected to the US Air Force squadrons located at nearby RAF Alconbury. For a variety of reasons, the English didn't much like the Americans after the second world war. Maybe the Americans sensed that. I personally had nothing against them, but those children in the next street could be arrogant and brattish. There were stand-offs and there was name calling and there was an occasion when I got stones thrown at me, one of which cracked a lens on my glasses. 

When I told my dad what had happened, he sent me round to complain to the parents of the child (Buzz, or Chuck or some such) who had been responsible. The crew-cut father of Buzz or Chuck just laughed when I told him why I was there and said "Tell your father to come and see me himself if he's got a problem." I reported back faithfully and as far as I'm aware there was no follow up. Was I being taught another lesson? I've no idea. 

Anyway, the lens was replaced and I continued to wear my little, round NHS specs into my early teens, until such time as  I had a paper round and could save up to buy some decent frames. They made me look more like Brains from Thunderbirds, just as John Lennon was starting to sport the NHS look that I had loathed. And that unsavoury encounter with brattish American kids informs this latest poem.

Spectacle

Pebble dashed lens

fractured optic

a line jagged in the quartz.

He might have played David

though I was not Goliath,

Myopia no country for boys.

I knew nothing of reading stones

or how Abbas ibn Firnas

eurekad colourless glass.

But I did know brattish bullying

when I saw it

even through one corrected eye.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Sharks

Ever since the film ‘Jaws’ in 1975, when the ability of sharks to be predators and attack people on beaches was highlighted, there has been at the back of my mind the danger of sharks.

Not that I ever have swam in the sea or been on a beach where sharks are prevalent, but the idea is visibly planted following that iconic film.

I thought that not swimming in obvious places would protect me from the predator shark, but I was wrong.

Sharks can turn up in unlikely places where you don’t expect them. I worked for two years for an organisation where a shark was circling in our midst. He was a predator who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. He would exaggerate the amount of work he did and try to belittle the work of others. He would try and bully colleagues with his size and seniority; he would dominate conversations during team meetings in the hope that the loudest and most constant voice would be heard above others.

Then over the years I have been involved with many community projects, often from churches. These community focused groups offer support to people in need. One of the biggest needs is that some people are in debt and can’t find a way out of it. Sometimes the reason people have a large debt is because they have been ‘loaned’ money by so called loan sharks who prey on people in need, offering small loans and then charging huge interest and demanding with menaces repayment immediately.

So, be careful of sharks as it’s the ones you don’t notice you need to worry most about….

Shark

She found a shark in the fish tank
only 45cm long but enormous
in the 60 cm aquarium

this was a problem
a tank for tropical freshwater
fish and the shark is marine

a couple of spoons of salt
probably wouldn’t help
and what species was the intruder

if from the colder northern waters
then she could turn the heater off
but it’s hard to tell if a shark is hot

she hasn’t asked what it was doing
in the tank as it’s not the ones
you see you have to worry about.

Thank you for reading and stay safe from the predator,

David Wilkinson.

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Childhood Secrets - Dreadful Child

It took ages to pluck up the courage to tell my mother that I was being picked on and bullied by my supposed ‘best friend’. The tears came before I got any words together. I was only nine, perhaps ten and I can still feel the misery, anxiety and fear that filled my life because of her. My mother calmed me, soothed me and told me the best way of dealing with the situation was to stand up to this girl and her army of followers who were turned against me. I can’t remember her words but I remember feeling my worries melting away and my confidence building back up. I put her plan of action to immediate effect and it worked. My mother had wisdom and understanding.

Unfortunately, her understanding didn’t stretch as far as ‘the lipstick incident’ when I was twelve, well, twelve and a half. In the summer season of 1968 our main residence was a pub and hotel on Central Promenade. On Sunday mornings I would be in charge of my younger sister as we got the bus to our other pub at South Shore then a short walk to Rawcliffe Street where we went to Sunday School. Girls my age had started to wear lipstick for church. I wasn’t allowed to but I’d discovered that Rimmel cosmetics in Woolworths was affordable and used my pocket money to buy some. I kept it hidden, only taking it out with me on these Sunday trips. Safely on the bus I would put it on then on the way back I would wipe it off. I don’t know how I managed to forget to clean it off one day. It didn’t end well. My mother’s eyes were blazing as she sent me to wash my face. I didn’t think the colour was much brighter than anyone else’s, not really.

Then, around the same age, there was ‘the bra incident’. I expected the worst, but my mother was kind. School P.E. lessons had become my nightmare.  A vest wearing, bra-less nightmare. So I smuggled one of my mother’s bras to school and put it on when I got there. It wasn’t ridiculously massive. I’d had a practice at home. The folded sides were held with safety pins and the cups tucked in making a neat shape. This neat, feminine shape was noticed at home when I’d forgotten to remove my made-to-measure bra. I can feel my blushing to this day as my mother tugged a loose shoulder strap with a “What in Heavens is this?” I held my breath. This was far worse than lipstick wearing and I expected a slap – that was normal punishment if you crossed my mother. Anyway, all I got was sent to take it off and to stop being so silly. Auntie Kathy, who looked after my sister and I, was given the task of going shopping for a couple of Berlei Teenform bras. I was overjoyed.

And there was the ‘A Taste of Honey incident’. The film was on television in our lounge and my mother was watching it in between popping down to the bar. I’d already been sent to bed once but I was spellbound. I didn’t hear my mother come back up but there she was, shoo-ing me to my room with “This isn’t a film for you”. I can’t imagine why. I only wanted to know what happened to Jo. The baby bit and her friendship with Geoffrey went right over my young head. I crept back and watched it by peeping round the door frame behind her. I was really chancing it. My mother was certainly not one to be messed with. Yes, she caught me and dealt punishment, but she didn’t kill my love for Shelagh Delaney’s brilliant work. Dora Bryan was amazing and perfectly cast.

My chosen poem takes me back to ‘the chocolates incident’. It wasn’t Moonlight that got the better of me, but a bag of Thornton’s. It was a smallish bag starting off with maybe eight huge chocolates. It was a gift to my mother and I found it, unopened, in the sideboard drawer.  I kept nipping back for ‘just one more’ until I realised there was only one left and I’d better leave it. I didn’t own up straight away either. Dreadful child.

I was going through some school stuff belonging to my grown up children when I came across the reams of printed out My Space conversation. I think it was My Space. It was something before the days of Facebook, anyway. This conversation was evidence of one of our children being bullied online and school had been given a copy. The power of the written word is far stronger than the spoken word in this sort of thing and re-reading it upset me as much as it did more than ten years ago when it happened. It was dealt with by school, not to my full satisfaction, but between us we put a stop to it. A new generation, a new way of bullying.

 

CHOCS
Into the half-pound box of Moonlight
My small hand crept.
There was an electrifying rustle.
There was a dark and glamorous scent.
Into my open, moist mouth
The first Montelimar went.
 
Down in the crinkly second layer,
Five finger-piglets snuffled
Among the Hazelnut Whirl,
The Caramel Square,
The Black Cherry and Almond Truffle.
 
Bliss.

I chomped. I gorged.
I stuffed my face,
Till only Coffee Cream
Was left for the owner of the box-
Tough luck, Anne Pope-
Oh, and half an Orange Supreme.

 

Carol Ann Duffy

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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