The Ending

It would be safe to say that we were not overly informed regarding North Kent Writers in the schools of Northfleet and Gravesend, with of course the notable exception of Mr Charles Dickens, of whom the local members of the teaching profession seemed inordinately fond. As a group they were perhaps not particularly adventurous when recommending reading matter and from the age of eleven or twelve we progressed somewhat conventionally through those Dickens volumes thought to be Suitable to the Bronte sisters and Jane Austin followed by John Buchan as we reached the great age of fourteen. None of this was particularly exciting even for those of us who definitely leaned towards literary pursuits but on the other hand our particular corner of the teaching profession would not have considered trying to persuade us that Enid Blyton and Noel Streatfield were particularly unacceptable. To put this attitude into better perspective this was back in the days when our younger siblings were still allowed to be fond of Big Ears & Noddy and even Little Black Sambo and our Grandmas still knitted gollwogs along with bootees for new babies.

I spent two years at the Girls’Secondary Modern in Colyer Road and very few memories remain with me except how much I hated mathematics and team games. I remember little about the teachers as individuals though we must have had an English teacher because it was there that our year group was introduced to Jane Eyre. I had already devoured Wuthering Heights and fallen deeply in love with Heathcliff so I was not averse to a better acquaintance with his creator. I think I had been great influenced by the film version, loved by my mother who definitely regarded the literary epic as `the book of the film’. For years I associated Heathcliff with Laurence Olivier and Cathy with Merle Oberon and the only believable Ellen Dean for me was Flora Robson.

When I went on to Wombwell Hall my most preferred subject remained English and what delights were in store with the wonderful Miss K Smith as the prominent English teacher in of memory. It was she who spoke passionately of John Steinbeck and thought we might read The Grapes of Wrath and even more enthusiastically of George Orwell and The Road to Wigan Pier. She was perhaps mindful of the poverty that existed still in the lives of her students in those post war years. None of us were keen to tackle Orwell but a little group embarked upon Steinbeck and even stuck with him for a while. It might have been that ever present poverty that confined us as a group of working class teenagers largely to escapist literature. A sizeable number of us had become seriously addicted to love stories of the Mills & Boon variety which were exchanged between devotees rapidly and rapaciously. Invariably the tales featured teenage girls not much older than ourselves, being wickedly Led Astray and forfeiting our virginity but still Good Girls at heart and for whom there was a predictable happy ending complete with handsome and bronzed hero. Jill Butler’s mother who had herself been a teenage bride thus awarding her daughters with an enviably slender, youthful parent, disapproved of such reading and so Jill was forbidden to read them. I was never as enthusiastic about them as my classmates but fortunately for me by that time my own mother was in awe of my reading determination and ability, did not prohibit anything at all and therefore the literary world was my oyster. Considering that fact I did not make a particularly good job of taking advantage of the situation and was inclined to revert to favourite authors of my earlier childhood as comfort reading whenever I felt under stress. I was also particularly attracted to poetry and quite delighted when Miss K Smith spent one Spring term examining the major poets of the First World War. It was then I fell in love with Siegfried Sassoon and a little later with Wilfred Owen.

It was in the very first English class of my very last term of Wombwell Hall that the delightful Miss Smith launched the idea of a School Magazine and said that those of us who had a mind to do so might write a contribution. As the class poetry aficionados Julia Hill, Valerie Goldsack and I might even consider writing a suitable verse. And that was how I came to write my very first poem.

The Ending
The Hollow In the forest is lonely now and bare. Now nothing can recapture the joy I once found there.
The joy of scaling hornbeams, of eeling in the fen are only two of many I’ll never know again.
Even the forest creatures have now forgotten me. They who were my only friends when all was wild and free.
And as along the footpaths my wearying footsteps trend, a mocking voice reminds me – all pleasures have their end.

It should be pointed out that I would not have recognised a Hornbeam had I come across one and it was clear that I harboured some confusion regarding where it would be most likely to happen upon a fen. Nevertheless I was reasonably satisfied with this poetic effort and handed it in promptly before forgetting about it.

I said goodbye to Wombwell Hall, eager to become a wage earner, before the magazine emerged and gave the project no more thought as life as a London commuter took over. It came as a surprise when someone sent me a copy of the magazine some months later and I was delighted to see my name In Print for the very first time. It was then that I realised the verse was not about the Kentish woodland flora and fauna at all. It was more about saying goodbye to childhood.