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Eggs, Chips and Peas
Flat roofed buildings
Shrunken now
Stay huge within his mind
Halls still ringing
Distant plough
The future undefined
Hot summer sun
Bending air
The new-mown grass and paint
With squeals of fun
Children dare
To shrug off all restraint
Along the hall
The voices
All stilled by passing years
Familiar smell
Old choices
The break-time buccaneers
Unfamiliar
Classroom names
Not North or South or West
But "Beauregard"
Panto dames
Pop culture manifest
But clucking still
Schoolyard hens
Scratch round the pigs and rabbits
The children swill;
Clean the pens
Developing good habits
Smooth worn playground
All replaced
Knee-friendly safety tarmac
Keen danger now has
Been erased
Twixt climbing frame and racetrack.
"Come in, come in!"
Headmaster cries,
"Are you an old boy too?"
A fading tome we
Scrutinise
"We'll find the line for you!"
Time drops away
A child again
He stands before headmistress
On school's first day
Little men
Hints of future promise.
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Synopsis
A weekend walk through my hometown of West Bridgford led us to my old infants' school: Edwalton County Primary (ECP), which was universally known amongst its pupils as Eggs Chips and Peas. Standing at the pedestrian entrance pointing out familiar and not-so-familiar features, we were regaled by the incumbent headmaster who offered to take us inside. This poem is inspired by the feelings that visit gave me - stepping back into those once-familiar halls and corridors after an absence of almost forty years. With my child's eye, I remembered the school as a large building filled with authority. Now it seems tiny, and filled with amusement - gentle smiles at the work displayed and the child-sized chairs and tables. White boards replaced black, and there was more equipment in evidence than I remember. Classroom names had once been based on the points of the compass; now were more imaginative. The playground covered with new spongy safety material and an even larger menagerie of animals, but fundamentally the years have not changed the place.