Slade Green Marshes: an adventure playground of danger and excitement. It was the whole world in miniature when I was a kid. Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Hugh Neal www.arthurpewtysmaggotsandwich.blogspot.com
Medina House, Larner Road, Erith in Kent. My first family home being "nibbled" away. One of five tower blocks being demolished in June 2013 to make way for a new £120m regeneration project. We lived on the thirteenth floor: here, you can see, three floors from the top on the left hand side, our old flat being rubbed out of existence. Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Dave Stradwick.
You are all gone, now. The skyline thus cleansed, you make way for the future. When, once, you were the future. Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Dave Stradwick.
Bring me back a ruin(descent)
Hindered by progress, or the idea of progress: evolution-in-waiting bellows me to hide, tattering to the becomings of ruination. Animism creeps, not-yet hands pushing at dim velvet. Peeping one-eyed through the past where had borne such potent promise immutability lain intact flumped into snowy thickness and thrown hard against Georgian glass. Here comes the stealth of unillumination thankfully blanketing they were tied at the hips and neck, then wrapped as old mirrors. That door went nowhere it always does those Victorians, forever meddling, will folly themselves into any trouble. (resurrection) You haven’t changed one bit! I say to myself, showing you their brand new niceness. Spick as copper pans. Go on, spit in my fire the hiss is the thing that’s real. |
Round hereWhen I was a kid, round here
purple sweet peas carpeted common ground. Thick, and ripe for picking in their depths we found all manner of detritus, single shoes and old porn mags. My friends and I went roaming with our secrets and five fags. Down on Slade Green marshes fearless urban rangers, ankle deep in water never minding dangers. Our private wilderness so bloomed and we sank into its mire. Running, jumping, singing, shouting our youth ablaze, on fire. Untouched as we believed it that ground had seen its share, of blood and fear and wanting, we didn't know (or care). Needles in emplacements left by no one soldier brave. Heroin was young back then, at least, around our way. In my peaceful ignorance of 'paedos' underground, I hid among the rusting hulks waiting to be found. Underneath the tower block, the thirteenth floor my home, a dragon in the rubbish chute! Imagination sown. Each time that the fire brigade came screaming to a halt, to extinguish yet another mischief for which none would be caught. Our little speck of landing Mrs Kingsley kept so clean, a bizzy lizzy at her door she visits me in dreams. Skin shiny over knuckles a worn-thin wedding band. Her flowery dress, neatly pressed, a duster in her hand. And I guess she's been dead years now. She was old as could be then. I never knew, the day we moved, I'd not see her face again. But, move we did, from 'the flats', to number ninety-nine. We had gardens - front AND back - my own bedroom, yes! All mine! From the windows of our council house the world changed, all around. The sweet peas were uprooted, houses claimed my common ground. So, I don't own it any more, if I ever did. But home is home, wherever, inside I'm still that kid. Who ran and jumped and shouted, a childhood held dear, and though I think "I've come so far" my life began round here. 
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TransubstantiationLifted from my resting place
On the beach of shifting sand Out of time and substance, To trickle through your hand. An age has worn away my face To leave me scarred and hurt May your attention soothe me, Elevate me from the dirt. For now I become an object Of formulary lust Strike up your words of beauty, In poetry I trust. |
Hands
A pair of hands, smooth as glass.
Still now and for always, burnished and gnarled, skin shiny over ever-bent knuckles. Held in stark relief on the sheet that smells faintly of spring, in this winter room, my Grandfather's hands stopped moving. No more to whittle or turn, the lathes seep their oil into the sweet, still air in my Grandfather's shed. Smoothed wood handles, worn by love and perfect sense, songs and whistles linger in sawdust shapes drawn by little fingers. |
My Secret FriendOut on the path, I wait for her
my friend who’s just for me. We play and sing and laugh a lot, though no-one else can see. You call her imaginary, but she’s real and best of all, she’s made a solemn promise to be here when I call. My mum says she’s not really there, though the truth is mum don’t know the fun me and my friend have had or the places that we go. We get lost in the forest and fly up to the stars, then sit upon the rooftops throwing jelly beans at cars. We’ve dug up buried treasure and stared Blackbeard in the face. And we’ve ridden Pegasus to see the earth from space. If you think I may be fibbing, I’ll tell you it’s no lie - to say we’ve seen most everything, my secret friend and I. But now the time is ticking, she’s never usually late. But here I am still waiting sitting by the gate. I feel the world revolving as seasons come and go. I never thought she wouldn’t come, but perhaps I finally know. That secret friends are mortal and don’t last forever, but I’m quite sure I won’t forget the times we spent together. I think I hear the clock indoors chiming half past four. The day has almost passed without her, I’m not so little anymore. But, just as I turn to go inside, I hear the squeaking gate “I’m so sorry,” my friend cries “I didn’t mean to be this late”! The world turns again to greet the moon and my friend and I shall roam, weaving in and out of dreams making memories our own. So, grown-ups if you’re finding, modern life hard to survive, wait a while, by the gate you never know who may arrive. Though you may not have seen them for about a hundred years, secret friends remain with us and help allay our fears that we all grow old and crinkly and forget how to dance and laugh just have a little patience and pause there on the path. |
Photography by Jo Maddison
This is Daisy, the little girl who inspired the poem "My Secret Friend". She's a proper character who always seems to have a million and one very important things to attend to which grown ups just wouldn't understand. Daisy is one of those kids who, I can believe, won't be very much different at all when she's forty to the way she is right now: she's got very definite ideas about how things should be.
Her mum, Jo, is the kind of parent that every kid should be privileged to have: a true creative spirit, she encourages both of her children to strike out and try things for themselves, rather than swaddling them in cotton wool and being fearful of what the world may throw their way. I love Jo's photographs, they evoke very definite moods - the one below makes me want to listen to Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer", dig my toes into Californian sand and comb lemon juice through my hair for that authentic beach babe look! It's one of those images that really ties me to a certain place and time: my own version of California being Margate, circa 1993, bombing down the A2 in a friend's Mk II Escort Mexico for endless weekends of camping - slabs of Fosters lager, broken up and wedged into the nooks and crannies around the huge speaker which took up most of the boot space. We did indeed have our hair slicked back and our Wayfarers on. Halcyon days of lazing on the beach listening to music until our skin burned (we'd no more spend our beer money on sun lotion than we'd swim in the sea and ruin our crispy gelled hairstyles!), then back to the campsite for a bonfire and rounds of ghost story-telling until our closest tented neighbours yelled at us to shut up and go to sleep. Just as a particular scent can open a window to our past, a photograph can be equally evocative. For me, Jo's images vibrate with the resonance of my own memories, harking back to a romantic, idealised version of my formative years. Yes, I'm mixing truth with the kind of faded, curled-edged vintage lushness which probably never actually existed, but that just goes to prove the power of a really great definitive image. 
Photography by Jo Maddison
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