Night school

Dad mended our shoes with bicycle tyres on a last, detail of Fresh Air and Poverty quilt

Dickens takes some reading, he does

Descriptive is Dickens

Went to night school

And asked for more.

Now take my life

Born in a poor family

In the village,

School were pretty basic.

Ordinary kids, expectations not great

Didn't mind them not being.

School, I played the wag

Down to the the stream.

Youths hanging around to find work

The long chains of iron

Or gold, of thorns, or flowers.

Accepted your situation. Played 

Kick can, football, or the Artful Dodger.

Miners didn't want their kids 

Down the pit

Wanted better for them.

Scrooge loves cash

Nicholas Nickleby meets the crook

On the moors and makes his

Escape. Me?

I left school at 14. Dad says,

"Want to better yourself?

Go to night school."

The world lay spread before me:

Dazzling before me, the world.

Hugh Bradbury

29 January 2015

From the arthur+martha project Stitching the Wars. A Two year collaboration with older people in Derbyshire, producing two embroidered quilts, a book, interviews and a series of poems. 

More poems found here. A short documentary film about the project found here.