Remember Remember

........................Childhood days remembered.

Remember how the sun was always shining

In our childhood days

And innocence and laughter filled our lives

In many, many ways.

Shut your eyes a moment and dwell

On all the wondrous things

So normal in their being,

So magical their spell.

Remember the small cobbler's shop

Which hung with pungent leather smells

And the cafe on the corner

Where we purchased

Threepenny bags of sweets.

Can you see the Co-op

With its butter barrel and ham machine,

Crusty bread,

Indian tea

And all that sawdust on the floor.

Two rooms and a scullery

Were all we had for living in,

With set-in beds,

A black-lead grate

And linoleum on well-scrubbed floors.

Trains would rattle

In our village,

Shaking happy childhood homes.

We all believed in fairies

In those lovely, misty, summer days

And walks took us

To tall, green woods,

Where we would play

Or simply laze.

Were you a cowboy or an Indian?

Were you a king or a queen?

Did we sail down snow-thick hills

On corrugated iron sheet -

Did we fly our paper kites

And feel the wind

Beneath our feet?

There were parades and donkey rides

And cricket on the village green

Now there is some long, wild grass

In a place

Where our lives once had been.

To have the gift of shutting eyes

And travelling

Into bejewelled pasts

Of childhood's violet-coloured haze,

Like bluebell woods

And singing birds

And sunfilled days

And days

And days.

CATHERINE McALINDEN (nee SLUDDEN)

GARTCOSH 1944-1956.

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