Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Another Look
- A Great-Grandfather
- A Great-Grandmother
- Grandfathers
- Grandmothers
- Birthplace
- My Mother and her Two Brothers
- Their Wedding Photograph
- Sticks and Stones
- Hickory Dickory
- Jolson Sings
- First Day at the Grammar School
- Catching an Old Film on Television
- Days of TEFL
- Snap
- May 1997
- Emma at Seven Months
- Somewhere Down the Line
- No Joke
- For the Man I Used to Go Fishing With
- Fishing in the Grounds of a Therapeutic Community
- Not at his Best
- Dead of Winter
- ‘Committal’
- The Dovecote
- The Idea of Order at Hunts Cross
- Jupiter Optimus Maximus
- Squeezing a Poem out of Me
- Fragment
- Something for Gael Turnbull on his Seventieth Birthday
- Making an Arrangement
- An Invitation to Breakfast from Sydney Smith
- Hiroshima
- Sez I Sez I in Stephen's Green
- Seventh Heaven
- At Drumcliff in 1997
- Getting There
- Mnemósynon
- Moonlight on Leros
- Olives
- The Quality of Greek Light
- Scottish Waiter Bringing Squid
- Funerary Monuments, Aegina
- Taking the Hexameter a Walk
- Moonlight on Aegina
- Whalewatching – Vancouver Island
- Seventh-Storey Heaven
- Sarah Biffin
- Ancestors
- In the Dock Canteen
- On Tape at the Old People's Home
- Winter Solstice 2001
- A Long Way from Home
- Publisher's note
My Mother and her Two Brothers
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Another Look
- A Great-Grandfather
- A Great-Grandmother
- Grandfathers
- Grandmothers
- Birthplace
- My Mother and her Two Brothers
- Their Wedding Photograph
- Sticks and Stones
- Hickory Dickory
- Jolson Sings
- First Day at the Grammar School
- Catching an Old Film on Television
- Days of TEFL
- Snap
- May 1997
- Emma at Seven Months
- Somewhere Down the Line
- No Joke
- For the Man I Used to Go Fishing With
- Fishing in the Grounds of a Therapeutic Community
- Not at his Best
- Dead of Winter
- ‘Committal’
- The Dovecote
- The Idea of Order at Hunts Cross
- Jupiter Optimus Maximus
- Squeezing a Poem out of Me
- Fragment
- Something for Gael Turnbull on his Seventieth Birthday
- Making an Arrangement
- An Invitation to Breakfast from Sydney Smith
- Hiroshima
- Sez I Sez I in Stephen's Green
- Seventh Heaven
- At Drumcliff in 1997
- Getting There
- Mnemósynon
- Moonlight on Leros
- Olives
- The Quality of Greek Light
- Scottish Waiter Bringing Squid
- Funerary Monuments, Aegina
- Taking the Hexameter a Walk
- Moonlight on Aegina
- Whalewatching – Vancouver Island
- Seventh-Storey Heaven
- Sarah Biffin
- Ancestors
- In the Dock Canteen
- On Tape at the Old People's Home
- Winter Solstice 2001
- A Long Way from Home
- Publisher's note
Summary
George
didn't outlive the baby name he reddened at. Death made sure of it,
lumbered him, forever Doodie, neighbours’ nice-lad,
mother's son, always coming home with jam-jars,
darting tiddlers, tadpoles squirming, and now never coming home
from the sweltering sandstorm of a country he knew nothing of.
I'm like him. In this photograph (Hold it, Smile) the baby's me
he's holding, eyes scrunched up, oblivious of being shot.
John
kept his elder-brother name, dependable John, outliving both;
came home, tough sergeant if ever there was one, from that war,
to be a straight-talking donkey-jacket man, crafty with dock-lore,
pub-lore, solid as a sack of spuds, who knew his rights, and all
the wrongs of owners, blockermen; unloaded ships of cargoes,
sacks and crates, loaded them with copper tubing, sports cars, trains;
died in his garden slamming a spade into unrelenting clay.
Ada
my mother; married beneath her (only just) her sailor boy;
‘always a lady’ neighbours kept reminding me when she was gone,
as if somehow they knew the street had entertained a blessing;
didn't outgrow her baby name either. Pippy was a knitter
of cable-stitch, a silent sufferer. Why do I know so little of her –
that part of myself I never get much purchase on? What do I tell
grandchildren about the face they wear? That timorous look,
those eyes her eyes.
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- Information
- Getting There , pp. 12Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2001