Ooer...not another amateur poet! Don't worry, I won't make a habit of this but I'm just getting back in to blogging after a while away from it and felt I should post something, rather than just comment on other's posts as I have been doing (constructively I hope!) over the last few days.

I regularly go back to my Roger McGough poetry books and a line from one in particular, called “Wearing Thin” talks about being bought clothes as a child that one will ‘soon grow in to’ and he writes:

"Pulling in different directions
My clothes and I never matched."

It inspired me to write a small verse of my own, involving the unsolicited kindness of others. The story behind it goes like this:

When I was at Junior School in the early 60's and in Mr “Molly” Moreton’s class (he was my favourite ever teacher) I started to play football along with the other boys. At the time the most highly prized item you could own was a pair of black Adidas footie boots. My parents couldn’t afford such frivolous things and so I just slid about in the mud in my plimsolls. Keith Huggins, not a particular pal of mine, spotted this and said he had a spare pair at home that he would give me. Next day he brought them in. They were real old-fashioned brown ones with a big domed toecap and spare studs that one had to nail in to the sole! They had belonged to his Dad so were too big for my ten year old feet, but by stuffing newspaper in to the toes I could at least make sure that they stayed on when I kicked the ball!

A PAIR OF BOOTS

A wet field and what seemed like a hundred boys.
We chased around without a care,
Knowing that tea would always be on the table.

I ran hard, the ball was mine!
And then it wasn’t, as I slid past it in my plimmies
Like a train not stopping at that station.

And so it was in later life
I found it hard to get traction
Travelling not where I chose
But in the direction of most momentum.

A boy whose photo I still have
Saw the blur of me slide by
And promised me new football boots
To better tie me to the ground.

And so it was in later life
Gifts came unexpectedly
From people that I hardly knew
And not from where I thought they’d come.

Paper stuffed in to the toes
A clown among the richer boys
I felt obliged to use my gift
Of diving boots worn on the land.

And so it was in later life
Not for me the easy path
Never chosen first in games
Trying to fly in feet of clay.

But all this changed when I found me
And had my very soul unlocked
Was given wings and helped to fly
At last I left that field below.