I set myself the goal of reading five poems a day and due to circumstances beyond my control - an Uncle getting taken to hospital, a Mum who is his sister being constantly worried, while still caring for my disabled Dad and my Dads 75th birthday - I have well and truly been blown off course.
It's at times like these that I am thankful for the OCA and its relaxed style of deadlines. I can already feel this one slipping with only one poem written, a few notes and another only four lines long. The assignment is about emotion and how to convey it through the poem - especially when read out loud - after all that is what poetry should be about, the sound and emotion. The only emotion I could emote at the moment would be that of a truly knackered individual.
It's at time like these I have to remind myself how lucky I am to have been able to embark on this quest - something a Secondary School, Eleven Plus Failure, like myself would never have dreamed of, or been allowed to dream of by teachers or even parents. Even when I went to Technical College my English Language tutor wrote I had good writing style but I had an unhealthy fixation on death; she never asked me why I wrote about it so much. I was focussed on the subject having lost the second most important father figure in my life to cancer my Granddad. I hated this summing up of my subject matter because it exposed me, laid it there for all to see. I resented her and showed this by handing in very little work from there until the exams; childish but I was a teenager.
My revenge on my tutor, for this awful review that was delivered in my report, was total, measured and devastating. It was also wholly unplanned.
During the final exam, where my tutor officiated, we were given ten titles and told to write a story for on the ideas that sprang to mind; we had two hours.
"Waiting" jumped off the page. I saw it so clearly. My tutor, an emotional, motherly sort walked up and down between the two columns of students. She had the habit of pausing and reading each piece as she went - there was no cupping your arm around the page in those days for fear of being told off; it looked underhand after all. I plunged in, writing about my Nan standing in her kitchen, her two boys running in and out the back door; one was six, having been born four months after his Father had left for World War Two, the other was eight or nine. All the pictures of that period show her with a piny with a slightly torn pocket. I told how she had paid for a photographer to come to the house and take a family picture; the boys had newly knitted jumpers and she was having a new dress made from recycled material by a neighbour. The photographer came a day early and she had the photo taken dressed in her piny rather than the new dress. Her husband, my Granddad, was missing presumed dead; in truth he had been taken prisoner and had escaped three times, ending up being taken to Germany itself and set to work on a farm with the threat that should he escape the German farmer and family would all be killed; mum, dad and two girls.
As I wrote I became aware that my tutor paused at my desk a little longer than necessary; I made sure my arm remained firmly un-cupped and carried on.
I told the story of my Nan sending the older son, my Uncle, to the butchers with the instruction to stand outside until the butcher took pity on him and sold them some meat; the suit of clothes she had made for the same son out of her best curtains that he ruined falling in the harbour while pulling out a six pound mullet for tea - and the beating she gave him with a switch (a stick) every time he stopped as she chased him up the street. Then there was the afternoon nap that was interrupted when a bomb exploded up the street smashing in every door and window in the house and covering her and the sleeping toddler in glass. All the way through she wore the piny, her hand patting the pocket. Just before the end I had her retrieve a letter (written on thin airmail paper, which my family still have and treasure) from my Granddads’ commanding officer informing her that her husband had been involved in the Battle of Tobruk and was missing presumed dead - it was dated four years before. She put the letter back and returned to the sink to begin the preparation of a meal; peeling potatoes I think – it is one of my firmest memories of her.
As she stood there her youngest son came running in telling her there was a soldier at the door; she told him to ask him to come in, thinking it was one of the neighbours’ billeted lot. As she turned in the kitchen, in walked her husband, his eldest son on his shoulders; both were smiling. He slipped the boy onto the floor, while his youngest son clung to his Mothers piny. They stared at each other for a moment.
My tutor hesitated by my side but I hardly noticed, working feverishly against the enemy of every child in an exam - time.
My Granddad was thin, weighing around six stone. My Nan stepped towards him and taking a breath said, "I supposed you want a cup of tea?" My Granddad nodded and they fell into each other’s arms.
As I wrote "The End" at the bottom of the page I became aware of the figure at my side - blubbing!
I looked up to find my tutor, handkerchief clasped to her mouth and nose, tears rolling down her face. She reached down and tapped the page twice and struggled to smile.
As she walked to the front to announce the end of time other students turned to look at me; wondering what I had done. It was delicious and such a compliment to move her that way - but I always thought it didn't count because it was a true story; every incident. Now I know (perhaps) better. She never said anything to me but I like to think she might have liked to change the comment - a comment my parents took to heart and worried about.
I still have a fixation on sadness and mortality - something others have mentioned when reading my previous coursework - but I like to think it is more controlled and less adolescent. Maybe that is why I have feared this course more than any other; the exposure, stripping the words down to the barest minimum. No matter how much the deadline slips or how "exposed" I feel or should that be obsessed (?) I will complete the course and continue the quest....despite being that Secondary School, Eleven Plus Failure......
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