Omnibus

Shed Orgy
Behind (closed) shed doors
Consenting tools
Explore their sexuality

Feeler gauge
Claw hammer
Lump hammer

Angle grinder
Power drill
Trim and edge

3-in-1 oil *

*”The flexibility of the plastic spout
enables you to reach
those hard to get at spots”

2003. Now that's just silly.

Chip Supper Twice
The
Leyland
Lioness-
Only ever two,
Never meeting,
Greeting people who
Cling to the seating,
Hoping not to know
What it is
To be
Lonely

The formatting'll be screwed up, but never mind.

Can't find the poem I'm looking for, which is about to be published in Coffee Pot apparently (details to follow) but I'd better rescue this while it's here.

39

At the age of thirty-nine
I'm getting past my prime*
Elusive gravitas
As the years pass
Most go
For the big four oh-
for me it must suffice
To have been thirteen thrice

n.b next prime at 41

PD3

“Anybody seen in a bus over the age of thirty has been a failure in life”
Loelia, Duchess of Winchester 1902-1993

When my brother was released from gaol
The very first thing that I heard he did
Was find a scrapyard in Northamptonshire
In which lay dormant an old Leyland bus
A double-decker Leyland PD3.
He, my cousin Ian, and David Jones, my dad,
They dragged it back from whence it came,
A half-cab bus from Rossendale, and set to work.
They took the seats out, fitted a big slide
A ball pond, tables, fun packed stuff for kids.

On the back seat Ian found his name
A scrawled reminder of his vanished youth
Scribbled on some long forgotten teenage kick
In marker pen across the rear seat.

If you want an image, picture this:
Struggling with the wheel nuts in the bitter cold
Of January, and the bastards will not move.
They got the bugger going though, in months
And drove its lumbering frame
Towards the blesing of an MOT.

It passed, despite its lack of seats,
The half-cab window leaking, awkward clutch
Electric switches like in your 60s house
When you were young...

Ian’s a plumber now, and my brother’s rage
[Writing angry letters to the press, and
All England’s MPs, to ask them this:
“Do you think it’s OK for police
To lie? “ Tick just one box] is in the past,
And after three long years he’s turned a page.

The bus remains though, wrongly coloured blue,
The seats in storage and the destination blind
Proclaiming “Ellie’s birthday: Three” -
She’s six.
It doesn’t please the purists in the game
Restoring buses for the BBC’s
Next drama series set in Lancashire,
But every time I visit home I drive
The extra mile or so to look at it
Next to the barn he turned into his house
Before his wife walked out.
Leyland Titan PD3.
MTJ 434C.
Enough.

It makes me very proud and very sad
And fronds, that slant of life, and stuff.

Bicycle shed

'Behind the bike sheds'
stolen furtive kisses,
dunlop tyres fizzing across the tarmac
long gone schoolboys blazered up

Now the constructor’s wire walls
And dully neat concrete feet
Surround the sad site-
a safety-conscious keep out world,
and there's nowhere to go.

It's just gone.

Only last week,
Caught in a shower
With raindrops drumming
In my head, a moment's thought
decides on a photo project, bicycle sheds
across the nation.

not sadness for lost youth, unfilled promise, aching pasts
but for the shed I never knew
A time I never knew,
and that you never knew
that now there’s nothing left
to go behind.

At thirteen they were fooling
But at sixteen they'll be rulin'
And there's something in the air
of which we all will be aware
But they don't care, no, no, no, no... so
Come join the revolution, get yourself a constitution
Come join the revolution now

I don't need exotic treats -
Give those kumquats to John Keats.

But when you eat satsumas bare,
Spraying sunshine in your hair
In your garden, I'll be there.

Omnibus
Poems for all, by Brian Scranage

Unfinished - but I want to rescue it from my clogged hard drive

Warning: Contains mild peril
{Note on video box}

All Summer we prowled the hills-
One day we found ourselves
High on Scout Moor
Seven young lads in heat
With only a box of matches
For company.

Lonely tails of smoke,
Dying in the dry grass,
Suddenly.

A night in a collapsed arch
Beneath two storeys of drystone
That took the old pack road
Between two barren hillocks.
Ubiquitous anoraks useless
Against the iron cold,
Watching ribbons of lonely traffic
In the black velvet valley.

An abandoned open cast mine,
Explored on hands and knees
Calling backwads and fowards.

My brother inside motorway bridges
Or bullying builders to let him blow up obstacles to the new road
Or impaled on a nail in a deserted shed
Health and safety executive
Nickelodeon
Not suilable for children under 14
Not a toy

How Children Fail
*with profound apologies to John Holt

A TEST FOR TEACHERS
BLANK PAGE

Read the following carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Milly, Molly, Mandy,
Sweet as sugar candy-
last year.

But in their latest test-
They did not do their best.

1) Please read the data carefully
And on ONE side of A4
State briefly why the students named
Did not achieve much more.

ANSWER BOOKLET

That one worked as hard as most but peaked a bit too soon,
That one had no mum at home; that one was a buffoon.
That one was a wheeler/dealer, stole a mobile phone
That one lacked self-discipline – once his dad left home

That one was bone idle, that one clearly mad
That one’s brother took bad drugs and so he turned out bad
That one’s friends were enemies; that one too laid back.
That one could not read a map and got lost in the pack.

That one was a smoker and you know it stunts your brain
That one really struggled in a way we can’t explain
That one was too beautiful; that one had bad skin
That one had a bag so small her books would not fit in.

This one was defeated by the endless years of being schooled-
So ready and so willing and so able to be fooled
Made statements of resistance and of panic and of flight
Hemmed in by petty duties and a slave to being right.

Before you hand your answers in
You must be sure to check
That students have been fully judged
Against these National Spec:
• Value added information at seventeen point five per cent
• Less than National Value added pupils of the same raw attainment
• Average Mean points progress across the whole of the key stage
• “Progress compared to National Median” points score for his age

N.B. The bad students forget straight away.
The good ones do their best
To wait until the test.

END OF TEST 2000

They're probably passing the Education Act as we speak, the bastards.

Gracie Fields – Her Career Takes off

Aspirates her weak point-
But by dint of much encouragement,
She won a Rochdale talent show,
Singing ''Whhhat makes me love you ?'' aged seven

One of the ''Nine Dainty Dots,''
Joined ''Hayley's Juveniles'' at ten,
Then two years with ''Charburn's Young Stars"

[Then a half-timer in the mill
Singing from the balcony
Until a lary local woman
Umbrellaed her to stop.]

Gertie Gitana, the first George Formby,
Glamorous names for her star-struck mother.
Grace's ambitions?
To earn a hunded pounds,
And to sing at the Coliseum
Before she was twenty-one.

She begins to indulge
In a talent for mimicry
Until a leading lady complains
That she's stealing people's brains.

From then on it burgeons-
You know how it goes
Shopping-centre auditions
Makeover shows
Joining TV's "Pop Tartz"
The NEXT BIG THING,
With pop svengali
Simeon Sting
We watch her career
Simply explode
Limos,champagne,
Life ''On the road"
Dating Marky,
The guy from ''Maid Up"
HELLO Magazine spread,
''At home with her pup"

MTV showcase
Sell-out shows
Lads' magazine shoots
Diet videos

Pop
Shop
Thrills
Pills
Coke
Broke

Her career unfurled
In the News of the World:
"WE HAD GRACE
ALL OVER THE PLACE"

When she sang
"Mr Tower of London"
At the Coliseum
She was twenty-six.
She wanted to hang
The cheque on the wall
At home in Rochdale,
But her family's fear of burglars
Was too strong for that.