Peckham, 1954

(‘The Golden Eagle’, the Grand Surrey Canal, and Cobourg Road School)


‘SALOON BAR’ in acid-etched lettering
on the fixed half casement pane;
the outside walls of Dutch-glazed brick
of that strange, Victorian, brewery brown;
the cellar’s shutters black with pitch
to protect its contents from the rain
and through which, weekly, seasoned casks
of Charrington’s Mild Ale were lowered down
to sate the thirsts of the working class
and world war-wearied Peckham throats,
while the drayman’s pair, denied of grass,
would nuzzle at their nose-bagged oats.

‘The Golden Eagle’ announced the approach
to Trafalgar Bridge, that carried these folk
across the turgid Surrey Canal where, formerly, below
the barges, full of timber bound for Glengall Wharf
were pulled by steaming Shires plodding slow
the hoof-worn tow path from the north
and Russia Dock in Rotherhith.
And on the other side, beyond the bridge,
lies Willowbrook Road,
its name recalling an area more green,
but which now just consisted of serried rows
of prefabs where my Granny lived,
across from the laundry, at no.13

Sat on the corner of Neate Street and Trafalgar Avenue,
its former neighbours since demolished or blown to bits
without a ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ by the council
or the well-remembered doodlebugs
and the bombing suffered in the Blitz,
as a child, four times a day, I’d pass the pub
to Waite Street and the alleyway
between St Mark’s and the pickling works
and then, emerging by the church, I’d cross
to school in Cobourg Road where, carved in stone
and set in brickwork gothic and ornate
by some stone-cold Victorian mason,
were tablets set above two separate gates,
one for us ‘BOYS’ and one for the ‘GIRLS’
Wind-lashed latrines across the open playground,
and windows set high to divert the distractions
that might have intruded from the outside world.

Within those gates, our kindly masters, recently de-mobbed,
and cardiganed school-ma’ams, with spinsterish bobs,
(sadly every one of them now long since gone)
taught us to read and write, add up, subtract, along
with all manner of other interesting things –
how Caesar crossed the Rubicon
and the names of all our English Kings.
We practiced our ’Marie Anderson’ hand
In chalk on wood-framed ancient slate
(a backward step, I’ve always thought,
when compared to our parents’ copperplate)
but, by then of course, it was far too late.
For, in the fifties’ post-war Britain, ‘progress’
was well and truly in full swing
with a freshly crowned young Princess
(although the country mourned a much loved King)

--ooOoo--

Each dinner time I’d re-cross the bridge
back to the prefab in Willowbrook Road
where Nan would have my noon meal waiting
on the fold-down table. With a ‘nice’ cup of tea
or, sometimes, in the built-in fridge,
a green-topped bottle of Sukie Sunkist orange
bought from the milkman especially for me.
Ocassionally, the scruffy rag-and-bone man
would lay-in-Waite Street outside the gates
of old St Marks, enticing little girls and boys
with his ‘Empire Made’ cheap plastic toys.
Then I would run and beg my Nan
for Pop’s ‘old’ trousers for the rag-and-bone man.
And, with a penn’orth of plastic that would always break
somewhere between the alley and the school yard gate
I would be happy with my trouser-paid-for ware
(while my Granddad had to work a week
to earn another pair)

My childhood home was a two-bedroom flat
in Great Dover Street near the Borough Underground -
beside ‘The Roebuck’ pub and bound by Trinity and Globe.
A recently erected block to which we had removed
from Hubert House behind the Tabard Park
where Mum would walk me in my reins
and Dad would push me on the swings.
Shere House, though, had such things
as a shute for rubbish which I liked.
It also had an Otis lift and a lock-up for my bike.
We lived on the third floor at no.37
and, being born too late to have felt the pain
or heard the noise or tears of war,
bomb-sites seemed a playground heaven
I made tomahawks with other boys.
The handles we shaped
from exposed wall laths with our knives
and the heads we fashioned from the broken slates
of older, sadder, broken lives.
But, on Saturdays, Mum and Dad would take me
the mile on the bus down the Old Kent Road,
past ‘The Dun Cow’ pub to Nan and Pop’s for tea
of sandwiches, and cake, and jam and bread,
and possibly a soft boiled egg,
then at seven o’clock it was off to ‘Ted’s’

--ooOoo--

Mabel and Ted ran ‘The Golden Eagle’
so Ted gave the pub its more popular name,
and Dad and Pop would leave Willowbrook early
determined they didn’t miss out on their game
of shove ha’penny played on the brass-wired table,
like warm polished silk, worn satiny smooth,
and later, as soon as the ladies were able,
having cleared all the tea things and left-over food
they would dress me up in my Cobourg blue blazer
and off we would go, arriving later than the men.
The ha’pennies were ‘kissing’ and nudging by then.
The air was thick with cigarette smoke,
and the tables full of dark bottled stout,
and, there amongst Peckham’s kind-hearted folk,
this was my family’s big night out.

I would be left to sit outside that very pane
where the opaque etched window ‘SALOON BAR’ said
with a bag of Crisps and a lemonade,
the Smiths with their salt in a blue waxed twist
and the bottle of Bob White’s locally made.
While just inside the brown glazed walls, again and again,
I’d hear raucous cheers and calls at another filled-up bed,
and laughter and much homely talk.
Then Mum would bring me out some chalk.
and on the cellar doors, pitch black and matt
I would draw a dog or cat and, peering nervously
through the doors would beg my Mum “Come out again
and tell me what you think of that?”
The last bus back to the ‘Bricklayers Arms’
we would catch from just south of Trafalgar Bridge
and we’d see the friends that we’d left at Ted’s
from the seats on the northbound 63.
The last short leg home Dad would carry me
sat on his shoulders broad and strong,
and I knew that nothing could ever go wrong,
while the barges continued to carry their load
and while there was ‘Ted’s’ and Cobourg Road.