Then And Now

Having reverted to childhood as a subject this week, I've decided to stick with the theme a little longer. In the book I keep referring to, 'The Littlest One', you get a picture of a gentler, less complicated way of life by the time you've read it to the end. It was obviously written from a fairly upper class viewpoint. The little boy featured on all the pages, lived in a household with maids, servants, a Nanny. There's a dog called Toby and a nameless, black cat. His home sports a grand piano, which his Mother played sad music on 'when Daddy was ill', as one poem tells us.

As well as the family scenario, which includes references to Uncles, Aunts, Grandparents, Cousins - though, interestingly, no siblings - other people appear who add to the sense of time and place: a jolly postman: a boat builder: a baker with a shop window where gingerbread men have' bright, curranty eyes': travelling gypsies, complete with dire warnings to children ( they might be spirited away!).

There's a forge where ringing blows echo, as the boy watches sparks fly in the dusk, and in a nearby house, an old man called Peter Bollins lights the way upstairs with a candle, which casts scary, goblin shadows on the windows.

The book has no prose, simply poems that have all this information woven invisibly within their rhymes. I think it such a shame it's gone out of print.

Anyhow, having got children and childhood on the brain, I wanted to write something to show how far removed many of their lives are today, from the almost idyllic picture of the early 1900's that my favourite book portrayed.

Different Lives

Mum and I live
in a flat down town
in a building with a lift
that goes up and down.
We don’t have a garden,
but the park is close by.
We go there walking,
my Mum and I.

Dad lives on the river
in a barge tied with ropes
to a little wooden jetty
where the riverbank slopes.
It has coloured flowers
painted round its rim,
and I sleep in a bunk
when I go to stay with him.

My Grandparent's villa
is very far away,
beside a sandy seashore
in Spain, I heard Mum say.
We're saving up our money
for tickets on a plane,
to have a special visit
with Gran and Gramps again.