Their Daughter's First Day & A Long Farewell In Perry Barr

 When We Say "Farewell" But In Our Heart, We Know It's "Goodbye"

Here's part of what once was Birmingham City University's "City North" campus in Perry Barr. As I write, it has been leveled and a new housing scheme is part of the developments that are in progress right now. The original intention was for an "Athlete's Village" for the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Spiraling costs and other challenges meant that Athlete's Village proposal was abandoned and that the area will be part of the Perry Barr Regeneration Scheme. 

Places hold memories  

This is Perry Barr from the 1930's and I lived there in the late 50's early 60's. We lived in the house in the right foreground. It was the Caretaker's House for a Primary and Secondary Modern schools campus. They, together with everything else in view, have gone

So let's fast forward-it's September 2016 and I'm working at the BCU City North site. It's Welcome Week at the University for first year students. At the bottom of this building there was a cafe with some outdoor seating and I am watching the parents of student hang on to every minute they could before saying goodbye to their daughter. It is a hard watch: they are in deep pain.

Perhaps having lived there and my first school was on the same site (Birchfield Road Primary School), I felt keenly the longing for being in a place where change didn't have to happen and all the good things stayed visible, reachable and could be savoured in a second.

Would my dad come around the corner and catch me playing on the flat-roof of a building adjacent to the science block on the old secondary school site? Could I climb down the drainpipe that was hidden from view, would someone tell him that they'd seen me up there? Even now, some 58 years later, I am confident that I can describe the layout of our house, the school buildings and playgrounds: emotions and memories; they're powerful companions.

So back to that day in September 2016-I wrote a couple of notes that grew into this-it was re-discovered yesterday-19/12/2020 and I've rephrased a couple of lines today.

The Deferred Farewell

They talked,

Well, she talked

He heard and didn't listen

Or listened and didn't hear

Whichever it was

Deferred responses holding a Silence

That was holding an Ache

That was holding a pain that was

Heart and Soul deep

And still, she talked.

They stayed to make sure that her room

Their child's new home for....?

It seems like forever.

Hey! It's just three years

That's what we said,
In the empty one back home

Both spaces in which soon

Together or apart

Each newly, lonely heart will break.

When I was looking for some images of Perry Barr, this came up. It's the Blazer Badge of the 

Secondary Modern School that once shared the site and provided me with an adventure playground. The power of the motto the context of the poem and all it means to me isn't lost!

jd. 20.12.2020

My Dad and A Monument Made In Wood and Painted Blue

When My Dad Retired (1979)

He left the UK to return to Ireland and my mother went with him, even though she didn't much want to go. The whole experience didn't work out well and they were back in the UK in around 18 months.

He'd been a school-caretaker since the late 1940's/early 1950's and he began what turned out to be his final caretaking job in 1962, the first caretaker at one of Birmingham's flagship comprehensive schools, Perry Common Comprehensive. So, when he left in 1979 an appropriate and respectful series of celebrations and presentations took place. He'd been asked what he wanted as a retirement gift and had replied that he wanted some DIY tools, including a two-speed, hammer action Black & Decker drill. They'd bought a house in the countryside between Mullingar and Athlone and it needed work doing on it.

When they returned to the UK, they brought back everything they took with them, some shattered dreams and determination to be independent of anyone. I'll discuss this in another post at some future point.

Dad's childhood had been a "waste not want not" creative approach to the crushing poverty that had stalked Ireland for too many people for too many years. It grew in him an approach to making use of materials that in our  throw away society, would have been scrapped. He was also a permanently busy man. A lot of energy, driven (I think) by the determination to make the best of every situation with the resources to hand

Dad died in 1999 and my mom , broken hearted, carried on for four more lonely, sad years. "Broken Heart" doesn't figure on Death Certificates and whatever was written as the cause was in my view, an effect.

Clearing out your parents' house is awful. If you have, you'll know what I mean and if you haven't, I don't envy you. They die again. But you touch on stuff and keep it and then, out of the blue (literally and you'll find out why soon enough), its significance hits you in the core of your being and so it was with the two-speed, hammer action Black & Decker drill.

It was in a box!

and I can tell you for a fact that my dad would have made that box from "scrap" wood and the handle has been repurposed from a piece of leather. He had the means to buy a new and shiny one but his choice was I believe, driven by the "joy of making," thrift had developed into creativity and without knowing it, re-cycling!

...and on the inside...

As you can see-there's a box within the box

And look how well the drill fits around it-it effectively locates the drill and holds it steady when carried

and when you open the inner box-

there are the drill bits-

it's a dual-purpose piece of "making"

And so here we have it. Some spare timber, hinges and paint, all of it assembled around a well measured framework and the use of the inner space is a great piece of design.

My dad went to secondary school only when it rained, the rest of the time he worked, often labouring alongside his father. He never had a formal carpentry lesson in his life!

Born in 1914, he left Ireland in his early 20's, having made and sold a couple of pieces of furniture to finance his journey to England, He arrived at New St Station with 2/6 pence (12.5 pence) and started work soon after, working every day until his retirement (Holidays and illness notwithstanding!)

And so back to the box. It is a memory, a metaphor and a monument and when I open it, a drill comes out and love flows in. It's a good box, he was a good man.