At my school, I have been a tutor for a group of thirty pupils for the last five years. They are soon to leave school. Ruth is the Head of Year. She had the bright but not wholly original idea of producing a year book for this cohort. She asked me to write a poem for it so I wrote two. Here they are - whipped out on Monday night after the pub quiz. I wonder if Wordsworth did the same:-
Sausages
You arrive at the sausage factory
At the age of eleven
They put you in form groups
And call you year seven
It’s all just a long
Conveyor belt ride
So open your mind
Let the learning inside.
You leave the sausage factory
At the end of Year Eleven
When the last bell rings
You feel you’re in heaven.
It was all just a dream
You made in your head
Were you alive
Or just playing dead?
You arrive at the sausage factory
At the age of eleven
They put you in form groups
And call you year seven
It’s all just a long
Conveyor belt ride
So open your mind
Let the learning inside.
You leave the sausage factory
At the end of Year Eleven
When the last bell rings
You feel you’re in heaven.
It was all just a dream
You made in your head
Were you alive
Or just playing dead?
Mind Mapping
On the day I left school
I mapped my mind
All the main features
Were underlined
I thought of how
The years had passed by
Wishing I hadn’t
Been so shy.
The future in bubbles
Was shown on the right
My hopes and my dreams
In felt tip on white.
Connections were made
With arrows and lines
Crossing the paper
Several times.
And where would I go to
Now school was done?
To seek my fortune
And have some fun.
Find me a lover
And love me a friend
Make sure there are no
Regrets in the end.
In felt tip on white.
Connections were made
With arrows and lines
Crossing the paper
Several times.
And where would I go to
Now school was done?
To seek my fortune
And have some fun.
Find me a lover
And love me a friend
Make sure there are no
Regrets in the end.
I heard that in Sheffield they do actually make sausages from the under achieving children in order to keep the average exam grades up and get a bit of extra income from sales on the education authority's farmers' market stall, but I bet you're going to deny it aren't you YP...
ReplyDeleteNot at all Mr Clewley. Most of these dumb sausages are delivered to distributors in the North Yorkshire region where thousands of rural folk are now infected with mad sausage disease!
ReplyDeleteHey, you missed your vocation!
ReplyDeleteYou said "sausages!" That's a rude word. I know because I watch Blackadder. I've learned almost all of my British history from Blackadder.
ReplyDelete"Turnip" is also a rude word. (Or rather, "it is if you sit on one," says Baldrick.)
JENNYTA - Whaddya mean? You saying I ain't no poet or sumfink?
ReplyDeleteALKELDA - What's rude about sausages? I am bemused. And Blackadder was a comedy show invented by Ben Elton! It was not REAL History! Honestly, you American ladies - you're so gullible!
If I had been presented with poems like that when I left school I may have made the decision not to waste the next 15 years in the company of cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women. Mind you, remembering the obnoxious-I-know-everything, hairy arsehole I was: probably not.
ReplyDeleteIf it makes at least ONE school-leaver stop and think, then give yourself a pat on the back Mr Pudding.
Obviously I meant hairy, arsehole I was..........punctuation eh?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean, Blackadder wasn't real history? I wrote a whole blog post about it, after all: http://saintsandspinners.blogspot.com/2005/07/brief-history-of-british-empire.html
ReplyDeleteWould I???
ReplyDelete