Explanatory note: a grey morning, oozing with mist. I was walking down Roupel Street SE1, past the nostalgic bakery. It's a railway workers' terrace converted for use by today's inner-city rich – MPs and TV producers – a very retro sreet. You can see into the tasteful, expensive interiors, sitting and dining rooms knocked through, stripped floors, rugs. I thought – I'm in the 1930s! Of course, I don't remember them. But I remember people who did and, through stories and memories, they are in range of my imagination. The poem explains my prediliction, in theatre, for vicars and French windows. I have had enough Marxism shoved down my throat in drama, particularly at university, to last me for a lifetime. Hardly fashionable (come to think of it, Marxism is no longer fashionable) but I don't care these days. I have crossed the meridiem.
Glimpsed through long windows, a sitting room.
Curtains blowing in, a vase, polished floorboards
The past is fascinating; it is my loom.
The burnt dust smell of an old gramophone
Droitwich on the wireless dial, fur coats, mothballs.
The cracked leather chairs in my grandmother's house.
People knew their place in life, where to sit –
Colonel, vicar or bank manager.
I like the past. In fact, I remember it.
It is frozen in time, like a waxworks tableau
Providing an eternal narrative
Comic and tragic. The past is where I go.
You don't need swearing to put on a show
The crude embarrassment of agitprop
Stage nudity, or violence. Although
I do like them, a lot, my preference is to shop
In old-fashioned establishments that project
Calm, not chaos. The past is where I stop.
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