Bryan Islip's Blog, page 13

Early stirrings 1-7

Whilst writing my earlier autobiographical  notes in the narrative collection called Fisherboy I began to unearth long forgotten memories of my distant boyhood. I'm talking a lifetime - let's say seventy or so years ago. I remembered, amongst other things, about girls and about my sexual awakening. So I've decided, for no reason at all except that it pleases or even helps me, to compose or write another group of narrative 'poems' ... here's the first of them.

Early Stirrings
1. The Yanks Are Coming
There’s this eight year old in war-time Lancashire when the doorto England opens wide as his eyes,and they’re singing or hummingall about The Yanks Are Coming, mother says they'll help us win whilst father mutters better late … And me? I’m bedazzled, silent,standing outside our garden gateat the village roadside, puzzled,when that great convoy passespuzzled by Yankee imprecationsin language strangely accentedwhilst they throw out small tins of proper coffee and Wrigley’s much sought after chewing gum for us to scramble over: but whywould they want to meet the girls of Walton-le-Dale? I wonder,for girls are so boring, at least, as are my sisters three to meand girls can’t even fight the German Hun or Eyeties, anyone.But still there are more interesting things than where the fighting's beenor what goes on unseen behind the sightscreen on the green:like exploring the summer fields,and fishing (if father was home)or watching him shoot bottles off our fence, or birds alivewith his Home Guard forty five(he let me hold it, unloaded),and learning from a local boy to tell an ordinary rabbit hole from a breeding burrow, pull out a baby with a bramble, so at school I tried to please butit was not there I felt at ease, and  classes dragged along,and learning  right from wrong,and how the price of wrong is pain and ‘Bryan, don’t do that again’,yes, my world is full of fearsas dreams turn often into tears,'til came the time in that farmer’s barn with its piled high bales of straw, where up on top I hide watch that Yankee soldier ridea breathless, laughing girlwith all that grunting, groaning ending in strange female crying,and I feel unreasoned anger'though lustful wings are whirringand thus there is that early stirring.
 2. Jacqueline
That boychild of eleven fearsThose tearful, crying years! ‘She’s bad,’ my father says, ‘Your mother’s run away,with the builder Walter Smithand sisters Maureen and Tina, leaving me Shirley and you, so you are off to boarding school. Lucky, lucky boy! This school in Abingdonis good - and very costly, son.’ What had I done? I wonderedbut my secret tears and pain couldn’t take me home again.and dormitory nights I fillplotting just how best to killthat builder when I grow up; as for that rumoured thing called sex that’s wrecked my loved and lovely mother’s life and mine and Shirley’s and Tina’s and Maureen’s …
Until sweet little Jacqueline …
Of course she knew as I know, sixty four years later, that girls understand those male glandsfrom early age, and can see inthe sideways glance of youth,that boys will die for love of sheso easily, (or love of countryand many, many do): I loved the pretty girl in the gymslip, part of the convent crocodileen route to their hockey fieldfiling past the garden wallof Roysse’s greystone school.She must have seen me up in that fruit laden apple tree,(Adam and Eve in imaginationoh that snake’s reticulation),may have found my little note;maybe not - she wasn’t there,later, by Abingdon town hallor anywhere for evermore, yet still I see her bouncing curlsher lovely face all shiny cleanpretending I had not been seenthat day, giggling with her friendsas they walk on; oh Jacqueline!- I hear them say your name -and you are not the one to blamefor this boy’s loud heartbeat his newfound heat,  nor wasthe new-swoll breast beneathyour school’s embroidered crest.I guess you made a fine loverand goodwife and mother,  by now, great grandmother?You were worth the febrile costfor all of my love’s labours lost.
3. The girl in the lido
At thirteen years so very shy,worried by the where and why of carnal lust, of male rut - according to the scuttlebuttyou can be blind-struck by un-Christian thoughts, misdeeds -cold showers, hands best be out of bed in sight, extremesports exercise my very clean school cure to keep boys pureThen oh! that summer holiday,that girl in Newmarket lido!who has much not to answer for- for after all she only plays the games most girls have playedas sunheat makes a boy a fool  by a crowded swimming pool.I never knew so cannot nowtell you or me her name; so I'll say Dido, (Queen of the Lidonot that ancient Carthage!),wore a red-ruched costume,matching rubber cap, nutbrown limbs weaving, cleaving crystal turquoise water down below as I glance with fake unconcern from the highest diving board where I posed just for her sakeup to which I’d climbed to see if she, that really pretty girl could  really still be seeing me, so thin (as a rake whatever that is)and it’s an awful long way down and the boys behind callhey, jump or dive, don’t stall! So, clear of bodies down belowI try the lang’rous swallow divebut hit the water flat, ‘smack!’;swallow? only chemical waterand I imagine all the laughterthat hurt more than my pride as,shut-eyed down below I swimto reach poolside and can you, underwater, blush within that booming sub-aquatic hush?then, rising up I brush this Dido- so incorrect a way to say hello,for with an accidental hand Itouch the female promised land.
4. Kissing cousins
I wonder if you remember me,Jennifer; who I haven’t seenthese many years between?Eileen was Auntie Kay’s girlso her daughter, second cousinto me? Life was such a whirlthose days, our family a web tangled by divorce, by affluence, by lack of it, by lack of sense,by distance, by time together, by lack of familial tlc, andby unlovely sibling rivalry.But I recall that sweet fourteen,you who skipped so light betweenthe states of child and adulthood,so sure, me wishing I could, too,on holiday with Grandpa and Grandma, St Leonards-on Sea.You remember Bottle Alley?
That walk of coloured glass fragments embedded in its wallsunder the prom, six to ten feet higher than the shingle beach on to which in turns we jumpeddaring higher and then higheruntil, landing, I bit my tongueand how that stung! But boys don’t cry, folk always said and you just said, ‘So let’s go home, you go to bed; our Grans are out and, if it gets any worsepoor Bryan, poor bleeding star we can play doctor and nurse,and you can look, not touchand I can too, for that’s what we know doctors, nurses do.’Oh what a naughty, bossy lass you really were, Jennifer!But you did allow me a kiss -‘kissing is all right’, you said, ‘and a cuddle in hospital bed’. 
5. The music …  
I hear it yet, the music of first real, first non-imagined love: ‘There’s a small hotel, With a wishing well, I wish that we were there … Together’, wentthe song, our favorite during lunch-breaks, crammed into a record shop’s listening booth,Heather and I, co-workers over the (Petty Curie) road at Boots the Chemist, Cambridge, nineteen fifty, (my first exposure to the world of working for thathuman honey we call money).Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson,B side: We are in love with you, My heart and I …’ oh yesI remember well that first secret, no doubt clumsy touch / caressthrough coat, dress, whatever mysterious else is under there,musically inspired, hopingthe manager will not look in onour listening kiosk tryst, on mewrapped up in that old red mist:They say that love in blind, When passion rules, And that my heart and I, Are just two fools …right;Heather, you turned on my light‘Tonight, can we meet at quarter to seven?’Your ‘yes’, brightbeginning of my imagined heaven..But alas National Service called,was soon to send me far away - South Wales - but come what may my first long weekend leaveI hitch-hike many roadside rides back to Cambridge to look for you in the shop, only to hear‘She’s going steady, see, with a U.S.A.F. sergeant’; oh my dearHeather, how come you jilted me!
And I know that, if you ever say goodbye / I know we both would die / My heart and I
Thank you for the music, Pearl and Teddy; but of course we didn’tdie, neither my heart nor I, as, withmany a love-lost tragical sighI thumb it back to Wales, thenlearn how to pilot an airplane, and   fall in love with that great blue sky.

6. Lost and found
Tiger Moth, lovely old biplane  twin cockpits open, canvas frame,  stuff of a seventeen year old’s storybook Biggles dreams;how thrilling it seems to climbup front, pretending calm,instructor behind, thumbs up, prop swings, move forward, bump, bounce the grass faster, lighter, take the sky at last;Lincolnshire countryside passingpropeller spinning, wire struts humming, this National Service- oh yes! but, ‘This is no game,’our old, ex-fighter ace of a Group Captain sternly tells his rank of hopeful young fliers;No time for schoolboy pranks;step forward any man whowill not wish to kill the enemy’. And no-one moved although in truth we hadn’t thought of thattaking our new queen’s shilling- besides, try as hard as I canI’m still one callow youth whocan’t yet think himself a man!
Then we are sent across the Irish Sea; to Jurby in the Isle of Manall we fighter pilots - aces to benow officer cadets, there to dolots of character initiative tests, (hounds and hare I did the best,myself most elusive of the hares),but hours I spend dreaming at the classroom desk, thinking notof the theory of meteorology, or navigation, or the mathematicsof flight - but of  flying to town, my Saturdays well crowned with sweet Kathleen, walking her home, her goodnight kissthat for the next six days I miss:and then do I not need to knownor fear the coming precipice -or ‘aught - except I need her so.And when I fail the final teststhe fall is tough, the way is roughonce more gas turbine engine fitter, aircraftman second class based outside of York, not bitterother than about lost Kathleennevermore to touch, nor to be seen;but life moves on and of some comfort is that I like it there,wherein the best is yet to come;. no use at all to fret or moan - for York is where I find my Joan.
7. My first at last
Some enchanted evening, ’53,De Grey Rooms, City of York;I see her and she sees me: thus far it’s been all talkfor my air force pals and I -talk and several pints of beer.I cannot dance but I can try, I cross the floor to ask the dark haired miss; That one, I told my friend; The pretty one, but he’d just laughed; No chance, mate, don’t be daftshe’s too stuck up and you?you’ve got the two left feet.   But still I try and ask and hold my breath until - oh sweet miracle - she answers yes!
The girl is slim, well dressedher figure of the very best,out on the sprung-pine floor soft her hands, her perfume fills my all, I hold her not too close in case she hearsmy beating heart above the music as the dancing starts,lights low, crystal overheadturning, my friends grinning at me: I’m dizzy with despair.place my feet first here then there as the black-tied singer sings, Oh mine papa, to me you were so beautiful. I’m trying not to kick her shins.She turns her oval face up into mine; I see her smiling eyes, her ruby lips. I feel her body moving underneath the dressIf I’m to teach you, she starts tell me your name, you’re not from round about these parts? Her voice is low, well toned a lovely knife well honed to cut so deep into my heart. I’m Bryan, I say, So what is yours? She says, I’m Joan; hello, just follow me: so follow her I did, for thirty seven yearsof love and children four and laughter; in her end, of tears.
In York it was, my early stirrings reached natural conclusion;a boy had found his moorings;with his girl found joy in fusion.
***********

This, then, is the end of my Early Stirrings. With Joan as my wife, and in time our children, life flourished and ripened to all of its glorious potential and all of its joys. But of course, all of its disappointments as well. I have no complaints. I shall not leave this place with very much of the available field left unploughed.
Bryan Islip, August 2014

EARLY STIRRINGS 1-7

Whilst writing my earlier autobiographical  notes in the narrative collection called Fisherboy I began to unearth long forgotten memories of my distant boyhood. I'm talking a lifetime - let's say seventy or so years ago. I remembered, amongst other things, about girls and about my sexual awakening. So I've decided, for no reason at all except that it pleases or even helps me, to compose or write another group of narrative 'poems' ... here's the first of them.

Early Stirrings
1. The Yanks Are Coming
There’s this eight year old in war-time Lancashire when the doorto England opens wide as his eyes,and they’re singing or hummingall about The Yanks Are Coming, mother says they'll help us win whilst father mutters better late … And me? I’m bedazzled, silent,standing outside our garden gateat the village roadside, puzzled,when that great convoy passespuzzled by Yankee imprecationsin language strangely accentedwhilst they throw out small tins of proper coffee and Wrigley’s much sought after chewing gum for us to scramble over: but whywould they want to meet the girls of Walton-le-Dale? I wonder,for girls are so boring, at least, as are my sisters three to meand girls can’t even fight the German Hun or Eyeties, anyone.But still there are more interesting things than where the fighting's beenor what goes on unseen behind the sightscreen on the green:like exploring the summer fields,and fishing (if father was home)or watching him shoot bottles off our fence, or birds alivewith his Home Guard forty five(he let me hold it, unloaded),and learning from a local boy to tell an ordinary rabbit hole from a breeding burrow, pull out a baby with a bramble, so at school I tried to please butit was not there I felt at ease, and  classes dragged along,and learning  right from wrong,and how the price of wrong is pain and ‘Bryan, don’t do that again’,yes, my world is full of fearsas dreams turn often into tears,'til came the time in that farmer’s barn with its piled high bales of straw, where up on top I hide watch that Yankee soldier ridea breathless, laughing girlwith all that grunting, groaning ending in strange female crying,and I feel unreasoned anger'though lustful wings are whirringand thus there is that early stirring.
 2. Jacqueline
That boychild of eleven fearsThose tearful, crying years! ‘She’s bad,’ my father says, ‘Your mother’s run away,with the builder Walter Smithand sisters Maureen and Tina, leaving me Shirley and you, so you are off to boarding school. Lucky, lucky boy! This school in Abingdonis good - and very costly, son.’ What had I done? I wonderedbut my secret tears and pain couldn’t take me home again.and dormitory nights I fillplotting just how best to killthat builder when I grow up; as for that rumoured thing called sex that’s wrecked my loved and lovely mother’s life and mine and Shirley’s and Tina’s and Maureen’s …
Until sweet little Jacqueline …
Of course she knew as I know, sixty four years later, that girls understand those male glandsfrom early age, and can see inthe sideways glance of youth,that boys will die for love of sheso easily, (or love of countryand many, many do): I loved the pretty girl in the gymslip, part of the convent crocodileen route to their hockey fieldfiling past the garden wallof Roysse’s greystone school.She must have seen me up in that fruit laden apple tree,(Adam and Eve in imaginationoh that snake’s reticulation),may have found my little note;maybe not - she wasn’t there,later, by Abingdon town hallor anywhere for evermore, yet still I see her bouncing curlsher lovely face all shiny cleanpretending I had not been seenthat day, giggling with her friendsas they walk on; oh Jacqueline!- I hear them say your name -and you are not the one to blamefor this boy’s loud heartbeat his newfound heat,  nor wasthe new-swoll breast beneathyour school’s embroidered crest.I guess you made a fine loverand goodwife and mother,  by now, great grandmother?You were worth the febrile costfor all of my love’s labours lost.
3. The girl in the lido
At thirteen years so very shy,worried by the where and why of carnal lust, of male rut - according to the scuttlebuttyou can be blind-struck by un-Christian thoughts, misdeeds -cold showers, hands best be out of bed in sight, extremesports exercise my very clean school cure to keep boys pureThen oh! that summer holiday,that girl in Newmarket lido!who has much not to answer for- for after all she only plays the games most girls have playedas sunheat makes a boy a fool  by a crowded swimming pool.I never knew so cannot nowtell you or me her name; so I'll say Dido, (Queen of the Lidonot that ancient Carthage!),wore a red-ruched costume,matching rubber cap, nutbrown limbs weaving, cleaving crystal turquoise water down below as I glance with fake unconcern from the highest diving board where I posed just for her sakeup to which I’d climbed to see if she, that really pretty girl could  really still be seeing me, so thin (as a rake whatever that is)and it’s an awful long way down and the boys behind callhey, jump or dive, don’t stall! So, clear of bodies down belowI try the lang’rous swallow divebut hit the water flat, ‘smack!’;swallow? only chemical waterand I imagine all the laughterthat hurt more than my pride as,shut-eyed down below I swimto reach poolside and can you, underwater, blush within that booming sub-aquatic hush?then, rising up I brush this Dido- so incorrect a way to say hello,for with an accidental hand Itouch the female promised land.
4. Kissing cousins
I wonder if you remember me,Jennifer; who I haven’t seenthese many years between?Eileen was Auntie Kay’s girlso her daughter, second cousinto me? Life was such a whirlthose days, our family a web tangled by divorce, by affluence, by lack of it, by lack of sense,by distance, by time together, by lack of familial tlc, andby unlovely sibling rivalry.But I recall that sweet fourteen,you who skipped so light betweenthe states of child and adulthood,so sure, me wishing I could, too,on holiday with Grandpa and Grandma, St Leonards-on Sea.You remember Bottle Alley?
That walk of coloured glass fragments embedded in its wallsunder the prom, six to ten feet higher than the shingle beach on to which in turns we jumpeddaring higher and then higheruntil, landing, I bit my tongueand how that stung! But boys don’t cry, folk always said and you just said, ‘So let’s go home, you go to bed; our Grans are out and, if it gets any worsepoor Bryan, poor bleeding star we can play doctor and nurse,and you can look, not touchand I can too, for that’s what we know doctors, nurses do.’Oh what a naughty, bossy lass you really were, Jennifer!But you did allow me a kiss -‘kissing is all right’, you said, ‘and a cuddle in hospital bed’. 
5. The music …  
I hear it yet, the music of first real, first non-imagined love: ‘There’s a small hotel, With a wishing well, I wish that we were there … Together’, wentthe song, our favorite during lunch-breaks, crammed into a record shop’s listening booth,Heather and I, co-workers over the (Petty Curie) road at Boots the Chemist, Cambridge, nineteen fifty, (my first exposure to the world of working for thathuman honey we call money).Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson,B side: We are in love with you, My heart and I …’ oh yesI remember well that first secret, no doubt clumsy touch / caressthrough coat, dress, whatever mysterious else is under there,musically inspired, hopingthe manager will not look in onour listening kiosk tryst, on mewrapped up in that old red mist:They say that love in blind, When passion rules, And that my heart and I, Are just two fools …right;Heather, you turned on my light‘Tonight, can we meet at quarter to seven?’Your ‘yes’, brightbeginning of my imagined heaven..But alas National Service called,was soon to send me far away - South Wales - but come what may my first long weekend leaveI hitch-hike many roadside rides back to Cambridge to look for you in the shop, only to hear‘She’s going steady, see, with a U.S.A.F. sergeant’; oh my dearHeather, how come you jilted me!
And I know that, if you ever say goodbye / I know we both would die / My heart and I
Thank you for the music, Pearl and Teddy; but of course we didn’tdie, neither my heart nor I, as, withmany a love-lost tragical sighI thumb it back to Wales, thenlearn how to pilot an airplane, and   fall in love with that great blue sky.

6. Lost and found
Tiger Moth, lovely old biplane  twin cockpits open, canvas frame,  stuff of a seventeen year old’s storybook Biggles dreams;how thrilling it seems to climbup front, pretending calm,instructor behind, thumbs up, prop swings, move forward, bump, bounce the grass faster, lighter, take the sky at last;Lincolnshire countryside passingpropeller spinning, wire struts humming, this National Service- oh yes! but, ‘This is no game,’our old, ex-fighter ace of a Group Captain sternly tells his rank of hopeful young fliers;No time for schoolboy pranks;step forward any man whowill not wish to kill the enemy’. And no-one moved although in truth we hadn’t thought of thattaking our new queen’s shilling- besides, try as hard as I canI’m still one callow youth whocan’t yet think himself a man!
Then we are sent across the Irish Sea; to Jurby in the Isle of Manall we fighter pilots - aces to benow officer cadets, there to dolots of character initiative tests, (hounds and hare I did the best,myself most elusive of the hares),but hours I spend dreaming at the classroom desk, thinking notof the theory of meteorology, or navigation, or the mathematicsof flight - but of  flying to town, my Saturdays well crowned with sweet Kathleen, walking her home, her goodnight kissthat for the next six days I miss:and then do I not need to knownor fear the coming precipice -or ‘aught - except I need her so.And when I fail the final teststhe fall is tough, the way is roughonce more gas turbine engine fitter, aircraftman second class based outside of York, not bitterother than about lost Kathleennevermore to touch, nor to be seen;but life moves on and of some comfort is that I like it there,wherein the best is yet to come;. no use at all to fret or moan - for York is where I find my Joan.
7. My first at last
Some enchanted evening, ’53,De Grey Rooms, City of York;I see her and she sees me: thus far it’s been all talkfor my air force pals and I -talk and several pints of beer.I cannot dance but I can try, I cross the floor to ask the dark haired miss; That one, I told my friend; The pretty one, but he’d just laughed; No chance, mate, don’t be daftshe’s too stuck up and you?you’ve got the two left feet.   But still I try and ask and hold my breath until - oh sweet miracle - she answers yes!
The girl is slim, well dressedher figure of the very best,out on the sprung-pine floor soft her hands, her perfume fills my all, I hold her not too close in case she hearsmy beating heart above the music as the dancing starts,lights low, crystal overheadturning, my friends grinning at me: I’m dizzy with despair.place my feet first here then there as the black-tied singer sings, Oh mine papa, to me you were so beautiful. I’m trying not to kick her shins.She turns her oval face up into mine; I see her smiling eyes, her ruby lips. I feel her body moving underneath the dressIf I’m to teach you, she starts tell me your name, you’re not from round about these parts? Her voice is low, well toned a lovely knife well honed to cut so deep into my heart. I’m Bryan, I say, So what is yours? She says, I’m Joan; hello, just follow me: so follow her I did, for thirty seven yearsof love and children four and laughter; in her end, of tears.
In York it was, my early stirrings reached natural conclusion;a boy had found his moorings;with his girl found joy in fusion.
***********

This, then, is the end of my Early Stirrings. With Joan as my wife, and in time our children, life flourished and ripened to all of its glorious potential and all of its joys. But of course, all of its disappointments as well. I have no complaints. I shall not leave this place with very much of the available field left unploughed.
Bryan Islip, August 2014

Early stirrings - My first at last

7. My first at last
Some enchanted evening, ’53,De Grey Rooms, City of York;I see her and she sees me: thus far it’s been all talkfor my air force pals and I -talk and several pints of beer.I cannot dance but I can try, I cross the floor to ask the dark haired miss; That one, I told my friend; The pretty one, but he’d just laughed; No chance, mate, don’t be daftshe’s too stuck up and you?you’ve got the two left feet.   But still I try and ask and hold my breath until - oh sweet miracle - she answers yes!
The girl is slim, well dressedher figure of the very best,out on the sprung-pine floor soft her hands, her perfume fills my all, I hold her not too close in case she hearsmy beating heart above the music as the dancing starts,lights low, crystal overheadturning, my friends grinning at me: I’m dizzy with despair.place my feet first here then there as the black-tied singer sings, Oh mine papa, to me you were so beautiful. I’m trying not to kick her shins.She turns her oval face up into mine; I see her smiling eyes, her ruby lips. I feel her body moving underneath the dressIf I’m to teach you, she starts tell me your name, you’re not from round about these parts? Her voice is low, well toned a lovely knife well honed to cut so deep into my heart. I’m Bryan, I say, So what is yours? She says, I’m Joan; hello, just follow me: so follow her I did, for thirty seven yearsof love and children four and laughter; in her end, of tears.
In York it was, my early stirrings reached natural conclusion;a boy had found his moorings;he, his girl, found joy in fusion.

Early stirrings - Lost and found

6. Lost and found
Tiger Moth, lovely old biplane  twin cockpits open, canvas frame,  stuff of a seventeen year old’s storybook Biggles dreams;how thrilling it seems to climbup front, pretending calm,instructor behind, thumbs up, prop swings, move forward, bump, bounce the grass faster, lighter, take the sky at last;Lincolnshire countryside passingpropeller spinning, wire struts humming, this National Service- oh yes! but, ‘This is no game,’our old, ex-fighter ace of a Group Captain sternly tells his rank of hopeful young fliers;No time for schoolboy pranks;step forward any man whowill not wish to kill the enemy’. And no-one moved although in truth we hadn’t thought of thattaking our new queen’s shilling- besides, try as hard as I canI’m still one callow youth whocan’t yet think himself a man!
Then we are sent across the Irish Sea; to Jurby in the Isle of Manall we fighter pilots - aces to benow officer cadets, there to dolots of character initiative tests, (hounds and hare I did the best,myself most elusive of the hares),but hours I spend dreaming at the classroom desk, thinking notof the theory of meteorology, or navigation, or the mathematicsof flight - but of  flying to town, my Saturdays well crowned with sweet Kathleen, walking her home, her goodnight kissthat for the next six days I miss:and then do I not need to knownor fear the coming precipice -or ‘aught - except I need her so.And when I fail the final teststhe fall is tough, the way is roughonce more gas turbine engine fitter, aircraftman second class based outside of York, not bitterother than about lost Kathleennevermore to touch, nor to be seen;but life moves on and of some comfort is that I like it there,wherein the best is yet to come;. no use at all to fret or moan - for York is where I find my Joan.

Early stirrings - The music ...

5. The music …  
I hear it yet, the music of first real, first non-imagined love: ‘There’s a small hotel, With a wishing well, I wish that we were there … Together’, wentthe song, our favorite during lunch-breaks, crammed into a record shop’s listening booth,Heather and I, co-workers over the (Petty Curie) road at Boots the Chemist, Cambridge, nineteen fifty, (my first exposure to the world of working for thathuman honey we call money).Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson,B side: We are in love with you, My heart and I …’ oh yesI remember well that first secret, no doubt clumsy touch / caressthrough coat, dress, whatever mysterious else is under there,musically inspired, hopingthe manager will not look in onour listening kiosk tryst, on mewrapped up in that old red mist:They say that love in blind, When passion rules, And that my heart and I, Are just two fools …right;Heather, you turned on my light‘Tonight, can we meet at quarter to seven?’Your ‘yes’, brightbeginning of my imagined heaven..But alas National Service called,was soon to send me far away - South Wales - but come what may my first long weekend leaveI hitch-hike many roadside rides back to Cambridge to look for you in the shop, only to hear‘She’s going steady, see, with a U.S.A.F. sergeant’; oh my dearHeather, how come you jilted me!
And I know that, if you ever say goodbye / I know we both would die / My heart and I
Thank you for the music, Pearl and Teddy; but of course we didn’tdie, neither my heart nor I, as, withmany a love-lost tragical sighI thumb it back to Wales, thenlearn how to pilot an airplane, and   fall in love with that great blue sky.

Early stirrings - kissing cousins

4. Kissing cousins
I wonder if you remember me,Jennifer; who I haven’t seenthese many years between?Eileen was Auntie Kay’s girlso her daughter, second cousinto me? Life was such a whirlthose days, our family a web tangled by divorce, by affluence, by lack of it, by lack of sense,by distance, by time together, by lack of familial tlc, andby unlovely sibling rivalry.But I recall that sweet fourteen,you who skipped so light betweenthe states of child and adulthood,so sure, me wishing I could, too,on holiday with Grandpa and Grandma, St Leonards-on Sea.You remember Bottle Alley?
That walk of coloured glass fragments embedded in its wallsunder the prom, six to ten feet higher than the shingle beach on to which in turns we jumpeddaring higher and then higheruntil, landing, I bit my tongueand how that stung! But boys don’t cry, folk always said and you just said, ‘So let’s go home, you go to bed; our Grans are out and, if it gets any worsepoor Bryan, poor bleeding star we can play doctor and nurse,and you can look, not touchand I can too, for that’s what we know doctors, nurses do.’Oh what a naughty, bossy lass you really were, Jennifer!But you did allow me a kiss -‘kissing is all right’, you said, ‘and a cuddle in hospital bed’.

Early stirrings - the girl in the lido

The girl in the lido
At thirteen years so very shy,worried by the where and why of carnal lust, of male rut - according to the scuttlebuttyou can be blind-struck by un-Christian thoughts, misdeeds -cold showers, hands best be out of bed in sight, extremesports exercise my very clean school cure to keep boys pureThen oh! that summer holiday,that girl in Newmarket lido!who has much not to answer for- for after all she only plays the games most girls have playedas sunheat makes a boy a fool  by a crowded swimming pool.I never knew so cannot nowtell you or me her name; so I'll say Dido, (Queen of the Lidonot that ancient Carthage!),wore a red-ruched costume,matching rubber cap, nutbrown limbs weaving, cleaving crystal turquoise water down below as I glance with fake unconcern from the highest diving board where I posed just for her sakeup to which I’d climbed to see if she, that really pretty girl could  really still be seeing me, so thin (as a rake whatever that is)and it’s an awful long way down and the boys behind callhey, jump or dive, don’t stall! So, clear of bodies down belowI try the lang’rous swallow divebut hit the water flat, ‘smack!’;swallow? only chemical waterand I imagine all the laughterthat hurt more than my pride as,shut-eyed down below I swimto reach poolside and can you, underwater, blush within that booming sub-aquatic hush?then, rising up I brush this Dido- so incorrect a way to say hello,for with an accidental hand Itouch the female promised land.

Early stirrings - Jacqueline

Early stirrings
 2. Jacqueline
That boychild of eleven fearsThose tearful, crying years! ‘She’s bad,’ my father says, ‘Your mother’s run away,with the builder Walter Smithand sisters Maureen and Tina, leaving me Shirley and you, so you are off to boarding school. Lucky, lucky boy! This school in Abingdonis good - and very costly, son.’ What had I done? I wonderedbut my secret tears and pain couldn’t take me home again.and dormitory nights I fillplotting just how best to killthat builder when I grow up; as for that rumoured thing called sex that’s wrecked my loved and lovely mother’s life and mine and Shirley’s and Tina’s and Maureen’s …
Until sweet little Jacqueline …
Of course she knew as I know, sixty four years later, that girls understand those male glandsfrom early age, and can see inthe sideways glance of youth,that boys will die for love of sheso easily, (or love of countryand many, many do): I loved the pretty girl in the gymslip, part of the convent crocodileen route to their hockey fieldfiling past the garden wallof Roysse’s greystone school.She must have seen me up in that fruit laden apple tree,(Adam and Eve in imaginationoh that snake’s reticulation),may have found my little note;maybe not - she wasn’t there,later, by Abingdon town hallor anywhere for evermore, yet still I see her bouncing curlsher lovely face all shiny cleanpretending I had not been seenthat day, giggling with her friendsas they walk on; oh Jacqueline!- I hear them say your name -and you are not the one to blamefor this boy’s loud heartbeat his newfound heat,  nor wasthe new-swoll breast beneathyour school’s embroidered crest.I guess you made a fine loverand goodwife and mother,  by now, great grandmother?You were worth the febrile costfor all of my love’s labours lost.

Jacqueline

Early stirrings
 2. Jacqueline
That boychild of eleven fearsThose tearful, crying years! ‘She’s bad,’ my father says, ‘Your mother’s run away,with the builder Walter Smithand sisters Maureen and Tina, leaving me Shirley and you, so you are off to boarding school. Lucky, lucky boy! This school in Abingdonis good - and very costly, son.’ What had I done? I wonderedbut my secret tears and pain couldn’t take me home again.and dormitory nights I fillplotting just how best to killthat builder when I grow up; as for that rumoured thing called sex that’s wrecked my loved and lovely mother’s life and mine and Shirley’s and Tina’s and Maureen’s …
Until sweet little Jacqueline …
Of course she knew as I know, sixty four years later, that girls understand those male glandsfrom early age, and can see inthe sideways glance of youth,that boys will die for love of sheso easily, (or love of countryand many, many do): I loved the pretty girl in the gymslip, part of the convent crocodileen route to their hockey fieldfiling past the garden wallof Roysse’s greystone school.She must have seen me up in that fruit laden apple tree,(Adam and Eve in imaginationoh that snake’s reticulation),may have found my little note;maybe not - she wasn’t there,later, by Abingdon town hallor anywhere for evermore, yet still I see her bouncing curlsher lovely face all shiny cleanpretending I had not been seenthat day, giggling with her friendsas they walk on; oh Jacqueline!- I hear them say your name -and you are not the one to blamefor this boy’s loud heartbeat his newfound heat,  nor wasthe new-swoll breast beneathyour school’s embroidered crest.I guess you made a fine loverand goodwife and mother,  by now, great grandmother?You were worth the febrile costfor all of my love’s labours lost.

Early stirrings

Whilst writing my earlier autobiographical  notes in the narrative collection called Fisherboy I began to unearth long forgotten memories of my distant boyhood. I'm talking a lifetime - let's say seventy or so years ago. I remembered, amongst other things, about girls and about my sexual awakening. So I've decided, for no reason at all except that it pleases or even helps me, to compose or write another group of narrative 'poems' ... here's the first of them.

Early Stirrings
1. The Yanks Are Coming
There’s this eight year old in war-time Lancashire when the doorto England opens wide as his eyes,and they’re singing or hummingall about The Yanks Are Coming, mother says they'll help us win whilst father mutters better late … And me? I’m bedazzled, silent,standing outside our garden gateat the village roadside, puzzled,when that great convoy passespuzzled by Yankee imprecationsin language strangely accentedwhilst they throw out small tins of proper coffee and Wrigley’s much sought after chewing gum for us to scramble over: but whywould they want to meet the girls of Walton-le-Dale? I wonder,for girls are so boring, at least, as are my sisters three to meand girls can’t even fight the German Hun or Eyeties, anyone.But still there are more interesting things than where the fighting's beenor what goes on unseen behind the sightscreen on the green:like exploring the summer fields,and fishing (if father was home)or watching him shoot bottles off our fence, or birds alivewith his Home Guard forty five(he let me hold it, unloaded),and learning from a local boy to tell an ordinary rabbit hole from a breeding burrow, pull out a baby with a bramble, so at school I tried to please butit was not there I felt at ease, and  classes dragged along,and learning  right from wrong,and how the price of wrong is pain and ‘Bryan, don’t do that again’,yes, my world is full of fearsas dreams turn often into tears,'til came the time in that farmer’s barn with its piled high bales of straw, where up on top I hide watch that Yankee soldier ridea breathless, laughing girlwith all that grunting, groaning ending in strange female crying,and I feel unreasoned anger'though lustful wings are whirringand thus there is that early stirring.