TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN

I've been working on this poem for a while. It is based on a memory that just  popped into my head one morning. I can't remember the circumstances that led to the fitter I was working with as an apprentice, telling me about his National Service but the dilemma he faced that night stayed with me.

THE CLASS STRUGGLE

a synapse sparks unbidden

sets the memory unrolling

and I am back in the 70s

an apprentice working with a fitter

old enough to be my father

he’s telling me about his national service how

I spent it guarding Vulcan bombers in Yorkshire

and me a time served tradesmen

fully indentured but the RAF needed security

for the new super weapon

it wasn’t a bad billet and

the sergeant told me that

no one enters that hanger

not even your grey haired old mother God bless her

because it’s top bloody secret that’s why

and I’ll have your bloody balls on toast

if you bloody defy me and

it wasn’t a bad billet save

for that one night when a temporary gentlemen

[that’s was how they referred to conscripted officers]

rocked up and demanded to be let into the hanger

looking down his nose at me all received pronunciation

getting redder in the face and

then it was get out of my way

I’ll have you on a charge so I moved

and then I hit him with the butt of my revolver

did I mention we were armed guards

the officer went down like a sack of spuds and

there was hell to pay

I barely escaped a glass house holiday

never knew what became of that temporary gentleman

never saw a Vulcan either only on the television

years and years later and

he threw his dog end away

it had stopped raining

so we left the shelter of the pipe bridge

and went back to whatever we were doing before the rain

This is a rough draft. The Vulcan bomber was part of the UKs nuclear deterrent. It was a rather elegant shape. I am sure that the poem will change and I think that it is worth persevering with. Watch this space.

Here's Baba Maal.

Until next time.