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Musings From An LCC* Changing Room

kevin raymond

Monday, January 21st, 2013

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 It’s in a wooden hut I’m sat
As with a fondness I harp back
To the times when we were old and knew it all
Those wooden hut’s would harbour dreams
Of Irish immigrants kids who seemed
Content to spend the whole day playing football.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Tired limbs and bloodied knees
Sat midst mud and studded leaves
Warming to the foe across the way
Who seemed as spent as us?
From the dogged fight that they put up
On a council pitch some fifty feet away.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Teachers gone, we shared a fag
I can still recall the drag
On a Park Drive or a Bachelor passed about*
We were on a plain that would
Deem our Saturday mornings good
Enough to last till three o-clock came around.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Bread pudden and sarsaparilla*
Renewed our tired limbs with vigour
Whilst we sat like lauded hero’s on our laurels
Sharing tables, every match
Was talked about and every scrap
Relived as who done what could lead to squabbles.

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 Frozen pitches never dared
Put us off or made us scared
To get stuck in, and toil to win the fray
We were old and knew it all
Or so we thought till a leaden ball
Winded one to take your breathe away.

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 Ain’t there something that ‘a team’
Brings with fondness to ones dreams
Ace times, great games you played in, win or lose
Maybe the odds you overcame
Created who you are today
From the pain, the hurt, or fledging ego bruised?

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 Isn’t that warmth the muscles feel,
From giving your all out on the field
A barrier no mere cold can overcome?
Like the cocky strut a player struts
Has nothing to do with winning cups
But from having played a part, when games were fun?

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 Within our wooden changing hut
We sat back drained and shared the puffs
On the wonderful illicit thrup penny loose*
The world outside would have to wait
As diamond times spent with ones mates
Were the gems ‘The Football’ gave us in our youth!

© Kev 2013

Notes

* London County Council, who controlled most of the London boroughs when I was a kid growing up in the late fifties and early sixtys.

* Cigarette brands.

* A wonderful sweet hot / cold cordial, which I believe came to England with newly arrived West Indians on The Windrush, it used to be sold in most of the London street markets.

* As kids we couldn’t afford ten or twenty fags, so we brought illegal single’s for three pence each from the paper shop.

Go well and be lucky.

Carefree…..

Peace.

Kev.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/musings-from-an-lcc-changing-room/