Heard it in the Playground Read online

  Tomorrow, wait and see.

  But not now, Nigel.

  The nights belong to me!

  Swimming Lessons

  If we lived in the sea

  Like eels or fish,

  We would go to school

  And have walking lessons.

  We’d reach the beach,

  And – nervous in the thin air –

  Learn to stagger slowly

  On the warm sand.

  If we lived in the air

  Like dragon-flies or birds,

  We’d have our walking lessons

  On the tops of hills,

  The parapets of tall buildings.

  We’d be seized by gravity,

  Nervous of the lower depths

  And scared of… unfalling.

  If we lived in the earth

  Like worms or moles,

  We’d come to school by tunnel

  In dark glasses,

  Clump along like spacemen

  On the planet’s shell;

  Perplexed by the horizon

  And the rush of blood to our feet.

  The Assembly

  Our Father, which art in Heaven,

  We are coming to assembly

  In pairs

  Down the corridor – Sh!

  We are here, Lord,

  In the hall

  In rows now – Stop that, Simon! –

  Singing your Golden Oldies.

  Cross-legged

  On the wooden floor,

  Squinting past pointed palms,

  We ask You to deliver us

  From splinters.

  A pale-faced girl

  Leaves early to be sick.

  A red-faced infant

  Scuttles off for a wee.

  Mrs Gibbs complains about litter.

  Eternal God – is that the time?

  We collect our swimming badges,

  Hand in our hymn-books

  And leave – Sh!

  Up the corridor

  In pairs

  Foreveraneveraneveraneveran –

  Stop that, Simon!

  Amen.

  Bags I

  Bags I the dummy

  Bags I the cot

  Bags I the rubber duck

  That other baby’s got.

  Bags I the cricket ball

  Wickets and bat

  Bags I the hamster

  Bags I the cat.

  Bags I the pop records

  Hear the music throb

  Bags I the A levels

  Bags I the job.

  Bags I the sweetheart

  Lovers for life

  Bags I the husband

  Bags I the wife.

  Bags I the savings

  The mortgage and then

  Bags I the baby –

  Here we go again!

  Bags I not the glasses

  The nearly bald head

  Bags under eyes

  And the middle-aged spread.

  Bags I the memories

  How it all began

  Bags I the grandpa

  Bags I the gran.

  Bags I the hearing-aid

  Bags I the stick

  Bags I the ending

  Quiet and quick.

  Goodbye world!

  Goodbye me!

  Bags I the coffin

  RIP.

  Billy McBone

  Billy McBone

  Had a mind of his own,

  Which he mostly kept under his hat.

  The teachers all thought

  That he couldn’t be taught,

  But Bill didn’t seem to mind that.

  Billy McBone

  Had a mind of his own,

  Which the teachers had searched for for years.

  Trying test after test,

  They still never guessed

  It was hidden between his ears.

  Billy McBone

  Had a mind of his own,

  Which only his friends ever saw.

  When the teacher said, ‘Bill,

  Whereabouts is Brazil?’

  He just shuffled and stared at the floor.

  Billy McBone

  Had a mind of his own,

  Which he kept under lock and key.

  While the teachers in vain

  Tried to burgle his brain,

  Bill’s thoughts were off wandering free.

  Where’s Everybody?

  In the cloakroom

  Wet coats

  Quietly steaming.

  In the office

  Dinner-money

  Piled in pounds.

  In the head’s room

  Half a cup

  Of cooling tea.

  In the corridor

  Cupboards

  But no crowds.

  In the hall

  Abandoned

  Apparatus.

  In the classrooms

  Unread books

  And unpushed pencils.

  In the infants

  Lonely hamster

  Wendy house to let;

  Deserted Plasticine

  Still waters

  Silent sand.

  In the meantime

  In the playground…

  A fire-drill.

  Parents’ Evening

  We’re waiting in the corridor,

  My dad, my mum and me.

  They’re sitting there and talking;

  I’m nervous as can be.

  I wonder what she’ll tell ’em.

  I’ll say I’ve got a pain!

  I wish I’d got my spellings right.

  I wish I had a brain.

  We’re waiting in the corridor,

  My husband, son and me.

  My son just stands there smiling;

  I’m smiling, nervously.

  I wonder what she’ll tell us.

  I hope it’s not all bad.

  He’s such a good boy, really;

  But dozy – like his dad.

  We’re waiting in the corridor,

  My wife, my boy and me.

  My wife’s as cool as cucumber;

  I’m nervous as can be.

  I hate these parents’ evenings.

  The waiting makes me sick.

  I feel just like a kid again

  Who’s gonna get the stick.

  I’m waiting in the classroom.

  It’s nearly time to start.

  I wish there was a way to stop

  The pounding in my heart.

  The parents in the corridor

  Are chatting cheerfully;

  And now I’ve got to face them,

  And I’m nervous as can be.

  The Infants Do an Assembly about Time

  The infants

  Do an assembly

  About Time.

  It has the past,

  The present

  And the future in it;

  The seasons,

  A digital watch,

  And a six-year-old

  Little old lady.

  She gets her six-year-old

  Family up

  And directs them

  Through the twenty-four hours

  Of the day:

  Out of bed

  And – shortly after –

  Back into it.

  (Life does not stand still

  In infant assemblies.)

  The whole thing

  Lasts for fifteen minutes.

  Next week (space permitting):

  Space.

  Finishing Off

  The teacher said:

  Come here, Malcolm!

  Look at the state of your book.

  Stories and pictures unfinished

  Wherever I look.

  This model you started at Easter,

  These plaster casts of your feet,

  That graph of the local traffic –

  All of them incomplete.

  You’ve a half-baked pot in the kiln room

  And a half-eaten cake in your drawer.

  You don’t even finish the jokes you tell –

  I really can’t take any more.

  And Malcolm said

  … very little.

  He blinked and shuffled his feet.

  The sentence he finally started

  Remained incomplete.

  He gazed for a time at the floorboards;

  He stared for a while into space;

  With an unlined, unwhiskered expression

  On his unfinished face.

  Hide-and-seek

  When we play hide-and-seek

  5–10-15–20

  And I’m on

  And my eyes are shut

  25–30-35–40

  And I’m counting

  And it’s all quiet

  Except for me

  45–50-55–60

  I sometimes think

  (Just for a second)

  65–70-75–80

  Everyone’s gone!

  And all I’ll find

  Is an empty earth

  85–90-95–100!

  And just plain sky…

  Coming-ready-or-not!

  The Old Teacher

  There was an old teacher

  Who lived in a school,

  Slept in the stock-cupboard as a rule,

  With sheets of paper to make her bed

  And a pillow of hymn-books

  Under her head.

  There was an old teacher

  Who lived for years

  In a Wendy house, or so it appears,

  Eating the apples the children brought her,

  And washing her face

  In the goldfish water.

  There was an old teacher

  Who ended her days

  Watching schools’ TV and children’s plays;
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  Saving the strength she could just about muster,

  To powder her nose

  With the blackboard duster.

  There was an old teacher

  Who finally died

  Reading Ginn (Level One), which she couldn’t abide.

  The words on her tombstone said: TEN OUT OF TEN,

  And her grave was the sandpit.

  That’s all now. Amen.

  The Boy Without a Name

  I remember him clearly

  And it was thirty years ago or more:

  A boy without a name.

  A friendless, silent boy,

  His face blotched red and flaking raw,

  His expression, infinitely sad.

  Some kind of eczema

  It was, I now suppose,

  The rusty iron mask he wore.

  But in those days we confidently swore

  It was from playing near dustbins

  And handling broken eggshells.

  His hands, of course, and knees

  Were similarly scabbed and cracked and dry.

  The rest of him we never saw.

  They said it wasn’t catching; still, we knew

  And strained away from him along the corridor,

  Sharing a ruler only under protest.

  I remember the others: Brian Evans,

  Trevor Darby, Dorothy Cutler.

  And the teachers: Mrs Palmer, Mr Waugh.

  I remember Albert, who collected buttons,

  And Amos, frothing his milk up with a straw.

  But his name, no, for it was never used.

  I need a time-machine.

  I must get back to nineteen fifty-four

  And play with him, or talk, at least.

  For now I often wake to see

  His ordinary, haunting face, his flaw.

  I hope his mother loved him.

  Oh, children, don’t be crueller than you need.

  The faces that you spit on or ignore

  Will get you in the end.

  Things I Have Been Doing Lately

  Things I have been doing lately:

  Pretending to go mad

  Eating my own cheeks from the inside

  Growing taller

  Keeping a secret

  Keeping a worm in a jar

  Keeping a good dream going

  Picking a scab on my elbow

  Rolling the cat up in a rug

  Blowing bubbles in my spit

  Making myself dizzy

  Holding my breath

  Pressing my eyeballs so that I become temporarily blind

  Being very nearly ten

  Practising my signature…

  Saving the best till last.

  The Trial of Derek Drew

  The charges

  Derek Drew:

  For leaving his reading book at home.

  For scribbling his handwriting practice.

  For swinging on the pegs in the cloakroom.

  For sabotaging the girls’ skipping.

  For doing disgusting things with his dinner.

  Also charged

  Mrs Alice Drew (née Alice Jukes):

  For giving birth to Derek Drew.

  Mr Dennis Drew:

  For aiding and abetting Mrs Drew.

  Mrs Muriel Drew and Mr Donald Drew:

  For giving birth to Dennis Drew, etc.

  Mrs Jane Jukes and Mr Paul Jukes:

  For giving birth to Alice Jukes, etc.

  Previous generations of the Drew and Jukes families:

  For being born, etc., etc.

  Witnesses

  ‘He’s always forgetting his book.’ Mrs Pine.

  ‘He can write neatly, if he wants to.’ Ditto.

  ‘I seen him on the pegs, Miss!’

  ‘And me!’ ‘And me!’ Friends of the accused.

  ‘He just kept jumpin’ in the rope!’ Eight third-year girls

  In Miss Hodge’s class.

  ‘It was disgusting!’ Mrs Foot (dinner-lady).

  For the defence

  ‘I was never in the cloakroom!’ Derek Drew.

  Mitigating circumstances

  This boy is ten years old.

  He asks for 386 other charges to be taken into consideration.

  ‘He’s not like this at home,’ his mother says.

  The verdict

  Guilty.

  The sentence

  Life!

  And do his handwriting again.

  Songs

  The music for three of these songs is traditional. ‘Leavers’ Song’ fits ‘Goodbye Old Paint’, as used in the film Shane, and also Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid. ‘Mrs So-and-so’ fits a skipping rhyme, the title of which I forget, while ‘The Grumpy Teacher’ is, of course, ‘The Drunken Sailor’. The idea for ‘The Bell’ came from the title song of For Me and My Gal (Meyer/Leslie/Goetz), a Judy Garland/Gene Kelly musical from the 1940s. Finally, ‘The Mrs Butler Blues’ can be set to almost any made-up or borrowed bluesy tune the reader (singer) feels able to get his or her throat round. Happy singing!

  The Grumpy Teacher

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher?

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher?

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher,

  Early in the morning?

  Hang her on a hook behind the classroom door.

  Tie her up and leave her in the PE store.

  Make her be with Derek Drew for evermore,

  Early in the morning.

  Please, Miss, we’re only joking,

  Don’t mean to be provoking.

  How come your ears are smoking?

  Early in the morning.

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher?

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher?

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher,

  Early in the morning?

  Send him out to duty when the sleet is sleeting.

  Keep him after school to take a parents’ meeting.

  Stand him in the hall to watch the children eating,

  Early in the morning.

  Please, Sir, we’re only teasing,

  Don’t mean to be displeasing.

  Help – that’s our necks you’re squeezing!

  Early in the morning.

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher?

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher?

  What shall we do with the grumpy teacher,

  Early in the morning?

  Tickle her toes with a hairy creature.

  Leave her in the jungle where the ants can reach her.

  BRING HER BACK ALIVE TO BE A CLASSROOM TEACHER!

  Early – in the – morning!

  Mrs So-and-so

  In the classroom

  Sits a teacher,

  Who she is we do not know.

  Our own teacher’s

  Feeling poorly,

  We’ve got Mrs So-and-so.

  Our own teacher’s

  Firm but friendly,

  Lets us play out in the snow.

  Lets us dawdle

  In the cloakroom,

  Not like Mrs So-and-so.

  Stop that pushing!

  Stop that shoving!

  Line up quietly in a row.

  Somehow life

  Is not the same with

  Bossy Mrs So-and-so.

  Our own teacher’s

  Kind and clever –

  Not a lot she doesn’t know.

  Where’s the pencils?

  What’s your name, dear?

  Says this Mrs So-and-so.

  Now at last

  Our teacher’s better

  And it’s time for her to go.

  Funny thing is