General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Remember Wigan in '62?
We were nine then, me and you.
When nights drew in and brought a haze
Of magic to the Autumn days;
A tingling feeling in the air,
And on the old spare land....the fair!
Noses pressed to lit-up shops,
Penny arrows, lollipops.
Jumble-sale on Friday night,
"Take Your Pick" in black-and-white.
Nights when Jack Frost bit your nose,
And fog hung low in terraced rows;
We told ghost-stories in our den,
Of skeletons and bogey-men.
Penny-for-the-guy was fun,
And daring games of "ring-and-run"...
Carol-singers, mild and meek,
Always told "Come back next week"!
We're growing old...it's getting late;
The time passed by, it wouldn't wait,
The fair has gone...on that spare land
Now a hundred houses stand.
And in the front room of a house,
A child holds a computer-mouse,
Staring at a screen for hours,
On the spot where we picked flowers.
Is this how her life will be...
Computerised technology?
Or will she step outside today,
So we can teach her how to play
the games that came with lighter nights?
Summer pleasures, Spring delights.
Playing two-ball on the wall,
Chanting songs I still recall...
"Old Mother at Hindley Fair,
Get some papers to curl my hair".
Remember, too, the skipping rhymes,
Jumping into Mam's clothes-line?...
"Eeper, Weeper, Chimney-sweeper,
Had a wife but couldn't keep her".
Hopscotch chalked out on the flags,
Marbles kept in draw-string bags.
May-Queens formed all over town,
Mam's net curtain, cardboard crown;
Remember Wigan in '63?
We were ten then, you and me.