Hugh Epstein Hugh's poem as discussed in workshop :
It was the arguments
over Hungary, was Kruschev right,
my dad's stint selling the Daily Worker
each Saturday morning – and all
glowing with the glorious red shirts
of England's defeat in '53
or gathered in the marvellous book
with Zatopek's autograph in it.
Or the portable under the blankets you heard
Salesman's terrifying crescendo
blended to the steady up and back
of the front lawn mown at midnight.
Was all this odd or normal, sometimes
you wondered. Like the bomb-site
and the Socialist Sunday School
it was how we belonged in History.
Is this how to tell
one sort of English childhood
so sure then of its place that now
seems almost quaint and lived by someone else?
And the suburban country houses
and chauffered cars and trips to shows,
the school blazers, the Latin, the different friends
that replaced it, like some speculator
moving in on waste ground?
Now mainly it's this blankness.
There is no story here except
what's featureless, unrecorded,
and unending.
Hugh comments.