Seeking 'The Policeman'

My 'junior' school (from age 7 to age 10) education included weekly poetry lessons, hosted by the Headmaster. The poetry handbooks would be distributed around the class to each pupil. Next, the Headmaster would set up an old record player on the teacher's desk, and play records containing the spoken versions of the poems, whilst we followed the text within the poetry handbooks.

At the end of each term, the Headmaster would hold a poetry competition, whereby you would try to memorise the poems and recite them word for word. You would get a point for each line recited correctly, until you got a line wrong, and then you were out of the competition. You only had the time whilst other people were reciting to memorise the next poem. The person who recited the most lines without error was the winner. The winning pupil would receive a book token during the afternoon Assembly on the last day of that term. Fortunately, I won the prize every term and every year I was there, and those book tokens helped to furnish my collection of Spike Milligan books, the first two of which were poetry books ('Silly Verse For Kids' and 'A Book Of Milliganimals').

Anyhow, in my first year (and my first term), one of the poems that helped me win was entitled 'The Policeman'. I don't know who wrote it, and to this day I can only remember the second and third verses. They are as follows:

As he holds up his hand,
All the traffic has to hand.
Every car, every bus
Has to stop without fuss.
They must wait in a row
'Til the policeman tells them: 'Go!'
They must wait 'til the policeman tells them: 'Go!'

And if anyone's about
Who shouldn't be about
Then there isn't any doubt
That they should very soon look out
For the tramp of the feet
Of the policeman on his beat
For the tramp of his feet on the beat.

If anyone recognises this poem, I would be grateful to learn the name of the author, and more importantly, the missing first verse!

Parents' Day Blushes

In the 'Welcome To Random Verse' post, I made mention of a short rhyme I wrote when aged eight or nine years old, in response to the teacher's request to write a poem 'about your parents'. Back when I was eight or nine years old, smoking was far more socially acceptable, and more people in general were smokers, including my parents. Memories of the living room filled with a fog of cigarette smoke, of ashtrays full to overflowing, inspired me to write the following verse at such a tender age:

My Parents

My mum and my dad both smoke,
The rest of the family choke.
My dad, he smokes like a train;
My mum is just the same.

This poem was put up on the classroom wall at a parent/teacher evening.  Unsurprisingly my parents' reaction on returning from the parent/teacher evening was not warm and effusive, after seeing this piece of work, and having all the other parents see it too...  Thankfully my parents stopped smoking a few years ago. None of their children ever felt the desire to take up the habit.

Where I Live

Welcome to this town!
This place where I now live.
Police leave here at five each day
Past then, our help is far away
If ever trouble comes to stay
Outside of nine to five.

Welcome to this town!
With pubs and bars galore.
Drink and drink 'til God knows when
From early morn 'til after ten
And off to nightclub bars again
To drink your fill once more.

Welcome to this town!
Complete with racing track.
The one-way system - what's that for?
Boy racers, round the streets they roar
In cars that firms will not insure
Pedestrians, stay back!

Welcome to this town!
House builders make a buck.
Shoe-box houses built so fast
Wonder if they're built to last
But once your cash to them has passed
You're on your own - good luck.

Welcome to this town!
In former days, a gem...
But now the place has gone to seed
The river's choked with filth and weed
It's like a bush in urgent need
Of pruning to the stem.

Welcome To Random Verse!

Hmm, Those Weren't The Original Lyrics...

From an early age, I discovered that I enjoyed creating short 'silly' rhymes. This came about because of the old radio we had in the kitchen of my parent's house. The radio was one of those old valve models (pre-electronic era). It was often difficult to hear the words of the songs being played on the radio, so I would simply make up my own words to the tune and sing the song in my own form. Hey presto! Poet at large.

Parents' Day Blushes

When I was in 'junior' school (I would have been eight or nine years old at the time), my class was asked by the teacher to write a poem about their parents. I wrote a simple, four-line rhyme, which I felt described one aspect of my parents accurately!! My verse, along with the verses of all my other classmates, was pinned to a noticeboard in the classroom, after we had gone home for the evening. That same evening, the school held a Parent's Night, where all the parents were invited to the school, including mine, and they could read the verses written by the class. Let's just say that my parents were less than happy with my rhyme! Goodness knows what the other parents must have thought. In my defence, I had no idea that these verses were going to be put on public display, and I was only eight or nine years old - innocence of youth and all that!!

A Dustbin Full Of Verse

During my school years, my only verses that saw the light of day, as opposed to those floating around my head, were limited to the occasional homework assignment. Once I turned 18 years old, I would, on occasion, write down these poetic ramblings. However, they had a very short life span, as a few weeks later I would invariably throw the verses away. And that's pretty much what has happened for the last twenty years. Inspiration, followed by commitment to paper, followed by destruction. However, there has been the odd exception to this general rule...

The Christmas Card Affair

Just before Christmas 1989, I was faced with distributing to my work colleagues a collection of rather ordinary looking Christmas cards, having left it late to buy decent cards, all the nice ones having sold out. I decided to boost the appeal of these tawdry cards somewhat by writing a unique verse in each one. Each verse was an 'attempt' at humour, eight lines long, with something loosely related to a Christmas theme inside; I did try to tailor the verse to recipient where possible. I sent out between 20-30 cards, having spent an entire day churning out these little ditties. I could not have wished for a better reaction! People actually found their verses funny. They started showing other colleagues the cards I had sent, comparing verses, and once people realised that each verse was unique, people were checking each other's Christmas cards to see if it had one of my verses inside. Ah, recognition at last... a legend in my own lunchtime.

Valentine's Day Massacre, 2006

Earlier this year, my brother rang me up and asked me to think of humorous verses to put into three Valentine's cards - the catch was I had 30 minutes to complete them. All I had to work on was the recipients' names and one thing each that they liked. Accepting the challenge, I prepared three limericks and e-mailed them to him. An hour later, I got a request to do two more of the same for a colleague of his at work. The following day, the recipients opened their cards, liked what they read, and demanded to know who wrote the rhymes. Once they heard that I had written all of these verses, I received several more challenges to write ad-hoc verse. One was to write a poem to be read out at a wedding that one of my brother's colleagues was attending. Another challenge was trying to write a verse about the most unromantic gift any of them had received on a Valentine's Day - namely, a side of ham!! I wasn't going to let a piece of ham defeat me, and responded with a saucy limerick within the hour.

And What Does The Future Hold?

Since the advent of the weblog or 'blog', many people have put their daily thoughts online, where the masses can inspect them as they wish. After a lot of nudging and encouragement by an online friend of mine, I have decided to try my own blog, and commit future bursts of random verse here - though be warned, they may end up being deleted too, we shall see how it goes...