The blinds came down

  
Bland and bleak,yet home,
one tree only in the street
an elm before our front gate
privet hedges end to end
homes for heroes in 1922 .
Grass verges four foot wide
cut once a week
the gutters swept the same,
if I remember right.
The living rooms faced so
we looked into the kitchens
of Mrs. Holmes and Wheatley,
doors of different colours
painted by the council,
taps and doors repaired ,
rent man every week.
private houses three hundred quid
but rent at thirteen bob
Co-op just down the road,'til six,
the 'divi' always useful;
and we knew our place.
School over the railway bridge
the playing field an old town dump
bottles angle-iron beneath the suface
trained there every week
running for Yorkshire in home made shorts
and Foster's spikes: five bob for the bus.
Torres and Ray every Saturday afternoon
it was fun and we knew no better.
There was a war and I remember
a water tank before the Boyes's
guns and soldiers rushing passed,
Ack-Ack battery down the road,
shot down one of ours . . . .
friendly fire they call it now.
But then it stopped,no sirens
and the blinds came down,
a landslide for Labour,
another fight to win