COLLECTED POEMS Page 9

  Here is the rule for what to do

  Whenever your teacher has the flu,

  Or for some other reason takes to her bed

  And a different teacher comes instead.

  When this visiting teacher hangs up her hat,

  Writes the date on the board, does this or that,

  Always remember, you must say this:

  ‘Our teacher never does that, Miss!’

  When you want to change places or wander about,

  Or feel like getting the guinea-pig out,

  Never forget, the message is this:

  ‘Our teacher always lets us, Miss!’

  Then, when your teacher returns next day

  And complains about the paint or clay,

  Remember these words, you just say this:

  ‘That other teacher told us to, Miss!’

  Headmaster’s Hymn (to be sung)

  When a knight won his spurs

  In the stories of old,

  He was – ‘Face the front, David Briggs,

  What have you been told?’

  With a shield on his arm

  And a lance in his – ‘Hey !

  Is that a ball I can see?

  Put – it – a – way.’

  No charger have I

  And – ‘No talking back there.

  You’re supposed to be singing,

  Not combing your hair.’

  Though back into storyland

  Giants have – ‘Roy,

  This isn’t the playground,

  Stop pushing that boy!’

  Let faith be my shield

  And – ‘Who’s eating sweets here?

  I’m ashamed of you, Marion,

  It’s not like you, dear.’

  And let me set free

  With – ‘Please stop that, Paul King.

  This is no place for whistlers,

  We’d rather you sing!’

  The School Nurse

  We’re lining up to see the nurse

  And in my opinion there’s nothing worse.

  It is the thing I always dread.

  Supposing I’ve got nits in my head.

  I go inside and sit on the chair.

  She ruffles her fingers in my hair.

  I feel my face getting hot and red.

  Supposing she finds nits in my head.

  It’s taking ages; it must be bad.

  Oh, how shall I tell my mum and dad?

  I’d rather see the dentist instead

  Than be the one with nits in his head.

  Then she taps my arm and says, ‘Next please!’

  And I’m out in the corridor’s cooling breeze.

  Yet still I can feel that sense of dread.

  Supposing she had found nits in my head.

  Please Mrs Butler

  Please Mrs Butler

  This boy Derek Drew

  Keeps copying my work, Miss.

  What shall I do?

  Go and sit in the hall, dear.

  Go and sit in the sink.

  Take your books on the roof, my lamb.

  Do whatever you think.

  Please Mrs Butler

  This boy Derek Drew

  Keeps taking my rubber, Miss.

  What shall I do?

  Keep it in your hand, dear.

  Hide it up your vest.

  Swallow it if you like, my love.

  Do what you think best

  Please Mrs Butler

  This boy Derek Drew

  Keeps calling me rude names, Miss.

  What shall I do?

  Lock yourself in the cupboard, dear.

  Run away to sea.

  Do whatever you can, my flower.

  But don’t ask me.

  8

  Dog in

  the Playground

  The Ordeal of Robin Hood

  The Mighty Slide

  The Famous Five-a-Side

  Dog in the Playground

  The Match (c. 1950)

  The Ordeal of Robin Hood

  There is a new boy in our class;

  He came the other day.

  He hadn’t any friends, of course,

  So we let him be in our play.

  That was the first mistake we made.

  The play was called ‘Bold Robin Hood’;

  We’d practised it all week.

  The new boy missed rehearsals

  So he had no lines to speak.

  He thought of a few, though, as you will see.

  Besides, this boy was foreign,

  His English wasn’t good.

  He said his name was Janek;

  He’d not heard of Robin Hood.

  Robin Hood didn’t get to Poland, Miss Hodge said.

  Well, first we pushed the desks back

  To make a bigger space.

  Then we hung this curtain up

  For the outlaws’ hiding place.

  Miss Hodge just let us get on with it.

  Kevin Jukes was Robin Hood,

  Roy was Little John,

  I was the Sheriff of Nottingham –

  I had this red cloak on.

  The new boy was one of my guards, supposedly.

  The swords we had were rulers;

  The cupboard, Robin’s den;

  And most of us had moustaches

  Drawn with black felt pen.

  Roy’s was navy blue, but you could hardly tell.

  The rest of the class sat round to watch,

  Miss Hodge was watching too.

  Then Keith announced the title

  And who was playing who.

  Keith was also Friar Tuck with a cushion up his coat.

  At first it all went pretty well,

  Mistakes we made were slight;

  The trouble only started

  When we got to the first fight.

  There should have been three fights altogether;

  should have been.

  What we’d practised was an ambush

  To rescue Friar Tuck,

  With me and my guards just riding by

  Until the outlaws struck.

  No horses, of course, just ‘clip-clop’ noises.

  So there was I, my cloak tossed back,

  Duelling with Robin Hood;

  While Janek – I didn’t know it then –

  Was guarding me more than he should.

  Perhaps there’s nothing in the Polish language for ‘Aaargh!’

  Guards, you see, are meant to fight

  For a little while, then lose.

  Get captured, killed or wounded,

  Whatever way they choose.

  Usually our plays had guns in them, only this

  time Miss Hodge said she was sick of guns.

  But Janek wasn’t having that,

  He wouldn’t even defend;

  And the way he was generally carrying on,

  The play would never end.

  That was the second mistake we made: it ended all right.

  And still the worst was yet to come

  In Robin Hood’s ordeal:

  Not only wouldn’t Janek die,

  He was sword-fighting for real!

  The Merrie Men were looking less merry by the minute.

  Will Scarlett’s hand was stinging

  From the blows that Janek smote,

  And Friar Tuck was thankful

  For that cushion up his coat.

  Alan-a-Dale and Little John were already behind the curtain.

  We did our best to stop him;

  Tried ‘whispering’in his ear;

  But he was shouting foreign words,

  We couldn’t make him hear.

  I could see then how Poland knocked us out of the World Cup.

  The play was going haywire now,

  The audience could tell.

  When some of the guards tried changing sides,

  Janek polished them off as well.

  ‘Pole-ished’– get it? Keith thought of that on the way home.

 
Then, having done for the outlaws,

  He shoved me out of the way

  And had a go at Robin Hood.

  That wasn’t part of the play!

  In my opinion, Miss Hodge should have stopped it then.

  Now Kevin had this plastic sword

  (The play was his idea)

  And being who he was, of course,

  Was supposed to show no fear.

  I was showing fear, and Janek was on my side.

  But once the sword was broke in half,

  And minus his Merrie Men,

  Robin Hood dropped the other half

  And surrendered there and then.

  Then Miss Hodge stopped it.

  Anyway, that was the end of that.

  The audience gave us a clap.

  Me and Roy took the curtain down

  And joined the rush for the tap.

  It’s thirsty work, acting; and we had our moustaches to wash off.

  Roy also fetched the first-aid box,

  Put a plaster on his shin,

  And offered to settle Kevin’s nerves

  With a junior aspirin.

  Kevin was worried what his mum was going to say about the sword.

  Janek, meanwhile, was prowling round

  With his sword still in his hand;

  Suspecting another ambush, perhaps,

  From another outlaw band.

  Miss Hodge said he reminded her of Errol Flynn, whoever he was.

  Keith said, let’s wait for the Christmas play

  And have Janek in again.

  He’d make mincemeat of the shepherds,

  And slaughter the Three Wise Men.

  He’d be worse than Herod, Keith said.

  But I’m about fed up with plays;

  Football’s a better bet.

  Now we’ve got this match against Class 4

  And we’ve never beaten them yet.

  You can probably guess what was in my mind; Roy could.

  So tomorrow Janek brings his kit

  (The kick-off’s half-past three);

  And we’ll play him in the forward line

  He’s a striker… obviously.

  The Mighty Slide

  The snow has fallen in the night.

  The temperature’s exactly right.

  The playground’s ready, white and wide;

  Just waiting for the mighty slide.

  The first to arrive is Denis Dunne.

  He takes a little stuttering run.

  Sideways he slides across the snow;

  He moves about a yard or so,

  With knees just bent and arms out wide;

  And marks the beginning of the slide.

  Then Martin Bannister appears,

  His collar up around his ears,

  His zipper zipped, his laces tied,

  And follows Denis down the slide.

  The snow foams up around their feet,

  And melts, too, in the friction’s heat.

  It changes once, it changes twice:

  Snow to water; water to ice

  Now others arrive: the Fisher twins

  And Alice Price. A queue begins.

  The slide grows longer, front and back,

  Like a giant high-speed snail’s track.

  And flatter and greyer and glassier too;

  And as it grows, so does the queue.

  Each waits in line and slides and then Runs round and waits and slides again.

  And little is said and nothing is planned,

  As more and more children take a hand

  (br a foot, if you like) in the slide’s construction.

  They work without wages and minus instruction.

  Like a team of cleaners to and fro

  With clever feet they polish the snow.

  Like a temporary tribe in wintry weather,

  They blow on their gloves and pull together.

  A dozen children, maybe more,

  All skidding on the frozen floor.

  The brave, like bulls, just charge the ice,

  And one of these is Alice Price;

  Her red scarf flying in the breeze,

  You’d think she had a pair of skis.

  Others approach more cautiously;

  Denis for one (though he wouldn’t agree).

  His wobbly style is unmistakable:

  The sign of a boy who knows he’s breakable.

  And now the slide is really growing,

  And the rhythm of the queue is flowing.

  Some keep a place or wait for a friend,

  Some dive in the snow when they reach the end,

  Some slide and pretend to be terrified,

  Some stand in the queue and never slide.

  There are children with bags and children without,

  As they roll the silver carpet out;

  And some in pairs and some in a bunch,

  And one or two eating: an early lunch.

  There’s flying hair and frozen feet,

  And big and little, and scruffy and neat.

  There’s shouting and shoving: ‘Watch this!’ ‘Watch me!’

  ‘I’m floating!’ ‘I’m falling!’ ‘Oh, Mother!’ ‘Wheee!’

  And all the while from the frosty ground

  That indescribable sliding sound.

  Yes, snow’s a pleasure and no mistake,

  But the slide is the icing on the cake.

  ‘If we knocked that wall down, moved that shed,

  We could slide for miles!’ the children said.

  ‘If we knocked it all down – wallop – bop –

  We could slide for ever and never stop!’

  An icy ribbon tidily curled

  In a giant circle round the world.

  The slide by now is forty feet long,

  And a number of things have begun to go wrong. The queue stretches back to the playground gate;

  Certain boys find it hard to wait.

  While tough boys like Hoskins or Kenny Burns

  Are simply not used to taking turns.

  Like pockets of chaos or bits of sin, They break up the queue and muscle in.

  And all the time the slide gets slicker,

  And the sliders slide along it quicker.

  The quickest by far is Frankie Slater:

  ‘When I grow up I’ll be a skater!’

  The craziest? Well, Colin Whittle;

  He thinks the boy in front is a skittle.

  There’s bumps and bruises, bets and dares,

  Cries, collisions, pile-ups, pyayers.

  But even worse than damaged kids,

  The slide itself is on the skids.

  The feet that brought it to perfection

  Are pushing it now in a different direction.

  For everything changes, that much is true;

  And a part of the playground is poking through.

  ‘It’s wearing away! It’s wearing out!

  We need more snow!’ the children shout.

  At which point Hoskins quietly swears,

  And – minus the coat he never wears –

  Raises his hand like a traffic cop

  And calls on his fellow sliders to stop.

  Then straight away from the ranks of the queue

  Step Denis and Martin and Alice too.

  With no one to tell them and no one to ask,

  They tackle the urgent chilly task.

  They scoop the snow from either side

  And bandage up the poorly slide.

  Tread on it, trample it, smooth it, thump it.

  ‘If that don’t work, we’ll have to jump it!’

  ‘Jump what?’ says Denis, looking queasy.

  ‘The gap!’ says Alice. ‘Easy-peasy.’

  Elsewhere in the playground, the usual scene:

  A teacher on duty, it’s Mrs Green.

  A huddle of (mostly) shivering mums;

  Some wondering babies, sucking thumbs

  (Watching the world from way behind

  As they wait in a qu
eue of a different kind).

  A gang of girls, they’re shivering too,

  Discussing who’ll be friends with who.

  A little infant darting about,

  Giving his birthday invites out.

  While scattered here and there besides,

  Half a dozen smaller slides.

  Snowball battles, snowball chases,

  Swimming kit and violin cases:

  A student with a tiger skin,

  And fourteen children to carry it in.

  The slide, meanwhile, with its cold compress,

  Restored to health, well, more or less, Remains by far the star attraction,

  As Denis and Co. glide back into action.

  With breath like smoke and cheeks like roses,

  Pounding hearts and runny noses,

  Eyes a-sparkle, nerves a-quiver,

  Not a chance of a chill or a sign of a shiver

  (It’s a funny thought, that – it’s nice – it’s neat:

  A thing made of ice and it generates heat),

  They slide and queue and slide again;

  There’s six in a line – no, seven – no, ten!

  A motley crew, a happy band,

  Attending their own strip of land.

  ‘Fifty foot long by two foot wide!’

  ‘By half an inch thick!’ – that’s the mighty slide.

  Cool and grey and, now, complete.

  A work of art, all done by feet